Is bank money in use for making illegal arms in Munger district of Bihar?

Superintendent of Police M Sunil Nayak said the police had recently unearthed 14 illegal gun manufacturing units, which might have used bank loans taken under the Prime Minister's Rojgar Yojna programme.

"Investigations are on to ascertain the source of the money to set up those units," the SP told PTI.

These 14 units were parts of the 48 illegal gun manufacturing factories unearthed this year in the Maoist dominated district.

Munger is known for having a large number of illegal gun making units producing wide ranging firearms and supplying those to criminals across the country.

This Rs 20 crore market has its reach even beyond the country, including Nepal and Bangladesh.

Altogether 90 illegal gun-makers were arrested this year who were engaged in manufacturing pistols, single and double barrel guns, rifles, cartridges, magazines, carbines, detonators, shotguns and even AK-47 duplicates among others, Nayak said.

From the busted 48 units, a huge quantity of cartridges of different bores, 65 pistols, 170 magazines and arms making materials were seized.

Nayak said, several hundred pistols and carbines could have been made from the materials seized from just two illegal gun factories of Shadipur and Dilawarpur localities.

While sixty illegal gun making units were unearthed in the past four years in Munger, 48 such factories were spotted by the police this year alone, official sources said.

Two Maoists from Nepal who had come here to buy arms had been arrested in Munger in 2006, while two Bangladesh bound consignments were seized from Howrah in West Bengal the next year, the sources said.