Guards at Dunlop unit held

The Telegraph,December 2,2010

Calcutta/Chinsurah, Dec. 1: Five guards of a private security firm tasked with protecting the Dunlop factory in Hooghly’s Sahagunj have been arrested on charges of possessing guns allegedly procured against fake licences.

The CID claimed that last night’s arrests were part of a crackdown on a wider racket in which security agencies came together to procure fake licences to meeting the growing demand for armed security and the large number of guns needed for such personnel.

“We had received a tip-off from our sources that some security agencies are using fake licences to get guns for their armed guards. We had information that five such guards are in Dunlop factory. So we went and arrested them,” said Rajeev Mishra, DIG, CID (operations).

A Dunlop official said: “The armed guards are not Dunlop employees. They have been provided by a security agency.”

Preliminary investigations have revealed the Calcutta-based agency had hired the five guards, all said to be in their late twenties, from Bihar a few months back for guarding the Dunlop unit. While the company paid around Rs 8,000 every month for each of these gunmen, the agency offered the youths half the sum, the CID said.

“Sailendra Kumar Singh, Sushil Singh, Santosh Yadav, Jaiprakash Yadav and Anil Gupta have been booked under the arms act. We have called the officials of the agency for which they were working,” said a senior CID officer. Four single-barrel and a double-barrel guns were seized.

The officer said such fake licences were often traced to Bihar, Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and even Jammu and Kashmir. “To ensure that they can meet the escalating demand for gunmen, a large section of such operators (security) come together and run a racket that procures fake gun licences,” the officer added.

-- Shared by Ratul Das