Around two lakh live cartridges (which are more than what the entire Meerut police have), 44 guns (many of them sophisticated), one diamond studded pistol, around Rs 1 crore cash and 117 kg of packed meat of exotic animals, skins of wild animals like leopards and black buck.
This epitomises Prashant Bishnoi, the arms smuggler, who has a strong nexus with international arms smuggling syndicate.
A 17-hour long joint raid, conducted by the DRI (Department of Revenue Intelligence) and Forest department at the house of ex-colonel Divendra Kumar in Meerut, revealed.
The officials have registered a case against the ex-colonel and his son, a national-level shooter, Prashant. No arrests have been made till the filing of this report.
According to Raj Kumar, additional director of DRI, 100 illegal fire arms, mostly imported, and around 2 lakh cartridges have been seized from two places. The raid was conducted after a tip off , on Sunday.
Father Divendra Kumar, a war veteran of 1971 war and an active participant in operation blue star, said, “I am ashamed of my son’s deeds. I was totally ignorant of what he had been doing. Let the law take its own course.” During the raid, Prashant managed to flee.
Prashant’s modus operandi was very interesting. He used to smuggle weapons and wild animals in vehicles which had 'army' written on them. These vehicles were not checked as they had a blue beacon.
According to officials, preliminary investigation suggests assistance of others as Prashant could not have run such illegal activities alone.
These vehicles were equipped with freezers for transporting meat of exotic animals for supply to customers without spoiling.
Foreign firearms were smuggled through Nepal thanks to its porous border with India. Weapons were dismantled and the parts were hidden in various parts of the vehicles. These are assembled at its destination.
Prashant has a penchant for luxury vehicles and used to buy a new car every three months.
Prashant had opened a security agency in 2005 and later expanded it to 14 states . With the help of this agency, he made contacts with officials
The officials said that during the raid it came to light that Prashant had smuggled expensive fire arms made in Italy, Germany and Austria and had a relationship with international syndicate of arms smugglers.
