Two of the arms sellers and (below) the third inspects a one-shotter outside the shanty. A Telegraph picture

Raiganj, April 23: An arms selling racket is active in North Dinajpur, thanks to political parties which want to be well-equipped before the elections and are acquiring weapons through criminals who are on their payroll.

Promises made and at the end of a lot of coaxing, a linkman of the arms dealers agreed to reveal to The Telegraph how the network functioned. What followed was a journey on Tuesday morning to an undisclosed location. It started with a ride to a nondescript bus stand at the conjunction of Raiganj and Islampur subdivisions, bordering Bihar where the linkman had

been waiting with a rickshaw.

A bumpy ride through a dusty road for some 30 minutes and the another guide, a man on a motorcycle, joined the team. The last phase of the journey was a blindfolded none-too-comfortable jaunt for 30 to 40 minutes more.

The blindfold removed and what met the eye was a vast stretch of paddy field with a shanty alongside a large clump of bamboo trees. The man on the bike had disappeared by then. The linkman entered the shanty and came out with three men with their faces covered in cloths. Each of them were holding crude hand guns and a few bullets.

“We procure the arms from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and even Bangladesh. The bullets are supplied from other sources. We have a network in the district and we sell arms from six or seven places and never from one place twice,” said one of the youths.

He said the linkmen in the district procured orders from different political parties and sent them the list with the order written in code. “We use kathi to denote bullets, ek, for pipe guns, and dui for single-shot handguns,” the man explained.

He said each round of bullet fetches Rs 150 to Rs 200, pipe-guns are Rs 1,000 a piece, and single-shotters between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000. “There is good demand during elections and both the CPM and the Congress buy them. That is why we have almost doubled the prices now. We test the fitness of each piece we sell, if a bullet turns out to be dud, we return half the money charged through the linkman,” he said.

Another seller said if the police got on to them they either took shelter in Bihar or crossed over to Bangladesh. “We have small legal businesses with the linkmen as a cover and that is how we keep in touch,” the second man said.

The meeting lasted for about 30 minutes and the blindfold was put on for the return journey.

The CPM district committee secretary, Subir Biswas, admitted that arms rackets flourished in the district during polls. “The CPM does not need weapons during the election. If we had arms then how come only our workers get murdered? It is our opponents whose criminal elements are openly roaming around with arms in full view of police,” Biswas alleged.

Town Congress president Pabitra Chandra said of all the people arrested with illegal arms by the police in the past decade, not one was linked with the Congress. “All these are anti-social elements being sheltered by the CPM,” he said.

North Dinajpur superintendent of police Sankar Singha said he was not aware of any arms sellers. “The police are conducting raids to seize illegal arms, and it is better not to write about rumours,” he said.