WEAPONS OF MASS DISRUPTION

SSS Defence is trying to carve a niche in small-arms manufacturing by taking the Make in India route

- BY ABHINAV SINGH

It takes a few pieces of scrap metal to make a desi katta, the country-made pistol. It's a grey area in the Indian firearms scene, but is clearly popular enough to warrant YouTube tutorials on how to make one.

This, though, is not the ‘Make in India’ that SSS Defence believes in.

THE WEEK went to the manufacturer's facility in Bengaluru’s Jigani to find out what its idea of domestic weaponry looks like. The high walls, security guards and the barbed wire were clues of what lay inside, though the facility itself was another concrete box in an area with other factories, warehouses and IT firms.

After a thorough security check, we headed inside to meet Dinesh Shivanna, the co-founder and chief technology officer. He took us to a conference room which, on its walls, had a collection of pistols, machine guns and sniper rifles displayed proudly, like a parent would put up their toddler's drawings. Each of these weapons had been designed, built and manufactured in this facility.

The pride in Shivanna stems from a deep sense of patriotism. He said he wanted to build a small-arms ecosystem in the country, a space he said had been destroyed by the British, especially after the revolt of 1857. “India did not have a well-defined small-arms industry,” he said. “We had the ordnance factories that were recycling old weapon systems. The British, after the mutiny, stopped all kinds of weapons manufacturing in India. They closed down all the armouries and casting foundries. Even though we had built traditional guns for 500 years before, the British systematically destroyed everything. Post independence, our government set up ordnance factories and these factories started collaborating with certain countries. But none of the weapons were locally made and made for India.”