A local court in Lucknow has sentenced four persons to life imprisonment and handed out 10 years prison term to eight others on charges of importing spare parts of foreign weapons, manufacturing their duplicates and supplying them to other states, the police said.
Additional District and Sessions Judge, Lucknow, Durg Narain Singh on November 12 convicted the 12 persons on charges of criminal conspiracy, waging or attempting to wage war against the government, forgery, and several sections of the Arms Act.
The four persons sentenced to life imprisonment were identified as Mohammad Khalid and Ajay Pal Singh of Lucknow, and Gurucharan Singh and Amit Pal Singh of Kanpur. The court also slapped them with a fine of ₹3 lakh each.
The case relates to 2013 when the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad registered an FIR against the accused on charges of importing parts of foreign firearms, manufacturing their duplicates and selling them for good prices.
The FIR lodged against them had included IPC Section 122, collecting arms with intention of waging war against the government.
Mohammad Khalid, one of the main accused, in a nexus with Alvin Disa, a Mumbai-resident and pilot (who died in jail), would import parts of firearms from Canada and Singapore, the UP ATS said in a statement.
The parts would then be used to prepare “illegal weapons”, which looked “identifical to branded ones”, with the help of four firearm stores, the ATS.
These were identified as the National Gun House and Kisan Gun House, the latter run by Ajay Pal Singh, in Lucknow, Gururamdas Armoury in Kanpur, run by Amit Pal Singh, and Jain Gun House in Haryan's Sirsa.
The duplicate firearms would then be supplied to other states through one Mantu Sharma, an alleged Naxalite as per the ATS, and others.
The ATS said it had recovered an AK-56 rifle, seven 315 bore rifles, one carbine, 28 finished and seven unfinished pistols and revolvers, a bullet proof jacket, large stock of firearm parts and thousands of cartridges from the accused.
Those given 10 years imprisonment were also imposed a fine of ₹2.5 lakh. The eight were identified as Mantu Sharma of Aurangabad and Ramzan of Bhojpur (both in Bihar), Anil Kumar Jain of Sirsa, Harishchandra Pandey of Lucknow and Kanpur residents Vimal Kumar Vishwakarma, Kallu Sharma, Junaid Arshad and Zafar Arshad.
They were convicted under Sections 420, 468, 471, 467, 120B and 121 of the IPC, and Sections 3, 5, 25, 30 and 35 of the Arms Act.
