Bhubaneswar, June 6: Five students, including four enrolled in engineering institutes, were arrested on charges of possessing illegal arms.

Police have seized two automatic pistols, one country-made revolver and 10 rounds of live ammunition from the accused.

The accused have been identified as Jyotiranjan Behera, 21, Saswat Dhal, 19, Asutosh Behera, 19, Kumar Debananda, 19, and Manojit Maharana, 18. While the first four are third-year BTech students in different engineering institutes, Manojit is a third-year commerce student in a city college.

The police arrested all the accused from Kalinga Vihar. While one 9mm automatic pistol with three rounds of bullets was seized from Jyotiranjan, while another 7.62mm pistol and two rounds of bullets were found from the possession of Saswat. The cops seized one country-made revolver and five rounds of live ammunition from Manojit.

Investigations revealed that Manojit was involved in a number of rioting and murder attempt cases. He was involved in the vandalising of Ekamra College in October last year. The college campus had turned into a virtual battlefield with students clashing with the police over student union elections. Saswat was also involved in a case of rioting under Capital police station. The police said Jyotiranjan was suspected to be involved in illegal trading of arms.

The police had seized firearms in the city last month, an indication that middlemen were supplying them to petty criminals. “Most of these arms come from Bihar and Jharkhand. These weapons reach Puri and Berhampur before being delivered to local criminals. While the cost of a pistol is around Rs 5,000 in neighbouring states, it goes up to Rs 40,000 when the weapons reach Bhubaneswar and Cuttack due to involvement of middlemen,” said a police officer. The police have seized around 40 firearms over the past eight months.

The involvement of students, especially engineering students, has become a major cause of concern for the police. “We will conduct awareness programmes in engineering colleges to stop students from getting involved in petty crimes,” said police commissioner R.P. Sharma.

This is the fourth incident of recovery of arms in Bhubaneswar in the past three weeks. On May 26, the police had arrested two persons, including a Cuttack-based builder, and seized two pistols, one air gun, one revolver and 13 rounds of live bullets from the accused.

On May 19, two persons, including a second-year engineering student, were arrested for possessing a pistol and four rounds of live ammunition.