With rifles and imported arms, criminals outgun Delhi-NCR cops

If over a dozen murders of policemen in the last two years is an indication, police personnel across the National Capital Region (NCR) are being increasingly outgunned by criminals wielding assault rifles and imported handguns, often acquired through illicit markets.

- Sanjeev K Jha

While gangsters brandish high-end international handguns and assault rifles, police forces are often equipped with little more than aging 9mm pistols, outdated rifles, and often even just batons.

Criminals, increasingly resourceful and mobile, benefit from a burgeoning black market in arms. In a recent case, Delhi Police seized an improvised AK-47 rifle with 30 live cartridges. The weapon, assembled in the underground gun-making workshops of Bihar’s Munger district, was meant to be sold for just ₹2.4 lakh. The accused, a man named Kapil Kumar, told police that he acquired the gun from a property dealer and was allegedly supplying it to gangs operating in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

The illegal arms industry has long flourished in India’s hinterlands. Delhi Police's special commissioner of police (crime) Devesh Chandra Srivastava said that after Bihar’s Munger district, Western UP’s Bulandshahr and Madhya Pradesh’s Mhou area, Rajasthan’s Deeg area has now become a hub for manufacturing knockoffs of sophisticated weapons.

“The process is astonishingly informal. Crude lathes and welding equipment in tiny backyard workshops churn out imitations of AK-47s and other semiautomatic firearms with alarming efficiency. Despite frequent raids, the ecosystem has proved resilient. Intelligence inputs suggest that weapons produced in Munger and similar areas are increasingly ending up in urban centres like Delhi, feeding a growing appetite among organised crime syndicates,” he said.

In a major crackdown in May this year, Delhi Police busted an illegal arms manufacturing and supply syndicate operating from Deeg, arresting five people over a three-day operation. The gang allegedly supplied weapons to criminals in Delhi-NCR, including the Vikas Lagarpuria gang.

Joint CP (Crime) Surender Kumar said that the accused— Harvinder Singh, Sonu Singh, Mohammad Mubin, Sher Mohmad alias Sheru, and Mohammad Juber—were held after raids in four Deeg villages.