THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, April 11: Nine police stations out of 25 here in Palamu have laid hands on the illicit weapons.
The remaining police stations are equally in hot pursuit of recovering illicit arms. The recovery of illegal arms has built up a psychological fear among the prospective offenders.
12 kattas seized
The major haul is of the katta, as life-taking as any other weapon. Palamu police have so far seized 12 kattas. It takes just one day to manufacture a katta.
Where there is katta, there are pistols and revolvers, although pistols and revolvers are far more a finished product than katas.
The recovery of a country-made carbine is a shot in the arm of the Palamu police.
50% of illicit arms recovered are from vehicle checking drive
SP Reeshma Ramesan said, “During the vehicle checking, cops have laid hands on the illicit arms. Fifty per cent of the illicit arms recovered are from the vehicle checking drive.”
She has a point when she said, “Cops do vehicle checking in the urban and semi-urban areas even late evening or pre-midnight, but in the remote road lying in rural areas cops can’t wait for any tumbling down of the illicit arms late at night as the movement of vehicles gets almost tardy.”
Reeshma Ramesan further said “Our vehicle checking is not pre-announced now. It just starts at any hour or any road.”
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Six revolvers recovered from line hotel’s refrigerator in 2019
Hotels in the town are under the scanner of the police, but line hotels across NH 75 and 98 need to be searched for illicit arms and illicit liquor.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, one such search in a line hotel on NH 75 had seen six well-made revolvers tumbling down from the deep freezer of a refrigerator there.
A brick of ice cream camouflaged the six revolvers in the refrigerator. Such a hot thing revolver lying beneath the brick of the ice cream!
Seizure of land mines, illicit liquor and narcotics
The Jharkhand Story correspondent asked SP Reeshma Ramesan how Palamu police caught such a mammoth quantity of illicit liquor and narcotics like marijuana and poppy. Still, in that comparison, recovery of illegal arms is minimal, to which Reeshma Ramesan said, “Let me tell you, illicit liquor and narcotics are a means to livelihood here. It fetches instant cash. There is a big market for it too. In that way, illicit arms are not around. But whenever illicit arms pop out, our cops get it.”
The SP further claimed the recovery of the illicit arms in Palamu is no second to any district in Jharkhand.
Palamu police retrieved a 5kg land mine during the demining drive to the road and ditch ahead of the Lok Sabha election.
It is not known if this booby trap was a freshly laid one or an old one, as where it was retrieved, there were green shrubs and bushes, which suggests the death trap might be an old one. It’s retrieval is a big thing. It helps in CBM confidence-building measures.
The recovery of illicit liquor poses different challenges, like the one at Dangwar, where the police officer had a brush with a very imminent dangerous collision with the vehicle of the bootlegger who was trying to escape by overspeeding and rash driving.
Reeshma Ramesan said the bike of the police officer got severely damaged, and the vehicle of the bootlegger, too, suffered collateral damages.
