Bengal CID increases vigil to curb arms’ movement

Kolkata, March 15 (IANS) The West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday said that it has increased its vigil across the state to curb the movement of arms, explosives and cash ahead of the coming Lok Sabha polls.

"There has been a number of seizures of explosives, illegal firearms in the state by the CID and the West Bengal Police in the last few weeks. We are increasing our vigil across the state to track down such movements. The explosives are mostly coming from from states like Odisha and Jharkhand," Deputy Inspector General of West Bengal CID Nishad Parvez told IANS.

A large cache of explosives including 52,500 electric detonators, 106 cartons of gelatin sticks, 6,650 kg of ammonium nitrate, were seized during a raid in Bankura district on Wednesday night while another 1,000 kg of potassium nitrate was recovered from a pick-up truck in Kolkata's Tala area on March 9.

However, the officer said that the seized explosives were not used in making bombs.

"These explosives are generally used in coal mines and stone quarries. They are not used to make crude bombs. So there is no possibility that the seized items could be used in poll-related violence," he said.

The officer said security teams were still carrying out raids at different parts of the state

Along with explosives, large amount of unaccounted cash has also been seized.

On Wednesday evening, the Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police arrested Sunil Sharma from Kolkata's Baguhati area with a bag full of cash worth Rs 30 lakh.

Two others were arrested with Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) of the face value of Rs 8 lakh while two more persons were apprehended on February 27 with fake notes worth Rs 7 lakh.

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