Two suspected arms dealers from Bihar arrested in Agartala with pistols, ammunition

Agartala: In a joint operation, the Tripura Police and Assam Rifles arrested two suspected arms dealers after they arrived in Agartala from Bihar, officials said on Monday.

An official said that when Tripura Police personnel were conducting special vehicle checks on Sunday night in the Shalbagan area along the Agartala-Khowai road, they received information from the Assam Rifles that two persons were proceeding on foot from Domdomia towards Agartala, allegedly carrying illegal arms and ammunition.

Accordingly, a joint ambush was laid in the Shalbagan area, following which the two suspicious persons were intercepted and detained.

During the search, two pistols, three magazines and eight rounds of 7.65 mm ammunition, along with two mobile phones, were recovered from their possession.

The accused persons disclosed their identities as Suraj Kumar, 29, and Srikant Kumar, 36, residents of Bihar's Lakhisarai and Vaishali districts, respectively. They failed to produce any valid licence or lawful documents authorising them to possess the recovered arms and ammunition, the official said.

The recovered arms and ammunition were subsequently seized at the spot in the presence of an Executive Magistrate and independent witnesses by preparing proper seizure memos, he said.

Tripura has witnessed multiple arrests of suspected arms dealers, mostly from Bihar, over the past few years, with most of the cases involving illegal firearms allegedly smuggled into the northeastern state, often through train routes.

In a joint operation, the Tripura Police and the Railway Protection Force (RPF) had earlier arrested two suspected arms and drug peddlers after they arrived in Agartala on an express train.

The Tripura Police personnel and RPF troops recovered a loaded pistol and around 100 bottles of banned cough syrup from the possession of two youths from Bihar after detaining them at Agartala railway station.

In November last year, the Tripura Police arrested three persons, including an alleged arms supplier from Bihar, after seizing two country-made firearms and four magazines during a patrol operation in Agartala.

On May 8 last year, eight pistols and 16 empty magazines were recovered from an express train at Agartala railway station. The Government Railway Police (GRP) and RPF, in a joint operation, recovered the arms from the Tripura Sundari Express after the train arrived from Punjab’s Firozpur.

Tripura, which has an 856 km border with Bangladesh, is surrounded on three sides by the neighbouring country, making the northeastern state very vulnerable and sensitive to cross-border migration issues, smuggling of drugs, arms and various other contrabands. Except for some patches, most of the frontier had been fenced to prevent smuggling, trans-border crimes, cross-border illegal movements by infiltrators and inimical elements.

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