IGP DT Lepcha (second from left) shows off the seized arms and gold at Kalchini police station on Friday. Picture by Anirban Choudhury

Kalchini, Sept. 30: A key suspect in a Siliguri jewellery shop heist caught last night on the basis of a CCTV footage today led police to a huge cache of arms, which included among others two AK series rifles and twenty-four 9mm pistols.

The presence of so much arms and explosives in a speeding vehicle on NH31C and in Kalchini — a small Jalpaiguri town 170km from Siliguri — has prompted the police to seek help from its counterparts in Assam, suspected to be one of the hideouts of the gang.

Six persons, including a resident of Bihar, have been arrested. Seven others have fled. The gang is believed to be behind the robbery of the jewellery shop in Siliguri on September 19. Six assailants had come on a bike around 8.30pm on that day, gunned down one of the security guards and decamped with gold and cash in the shop.

A police source said the CCTV footage from the shop had helped the force identify one of the robbers. “We came to know that Amirul Islam alias Jallad, a resident of Jaigaon near the Bhutan border and a history-sheeter, was involved in the crime,” a police officer said.

Under instructions from the inspector-general of police of north Bengal, D.T. Lepcha, the force chalked out a strategy to track down Jallad. Basudeb Sarkar, the officer in charge of Bhaktinagar police station, kept tabs on Jallad.

Yesterday, the police came to know about Jallad’s presence in Kalchini and his plan to sneak into Assam. Sarkar, accompanied by a force from Jaigaon, arrested him last night.

During interrogation, Jallad spilled the beans on the vehicle that would carry him and his companions to Assam, 65km away. Accordingly, the Mahindra Scorpio (WB74S5170) was intercepted on NH31C — the link to Assam — at Kalchini. Four persons were arrested.

On the basis of information provided by them, police launched extensive raids and seized arms and ammunition from the house of an LIC agent in Hamiltongonj, a kilometre from here. He has been arrested.

At the Kalchini police station, the IGP said: “This is the first time that such a large number of firearms have been recovered in a single operation, along with ammunition, gold and cash. The gang was involved in robberies across the region, including Siliguri, Mathabhanga and Pundibari in Cooch Behar district and Falakata in Jalpaiguri.

“On the list of seized arms are twenty-four 9mm pistols, two Ak-47 rifles, two carbines, 13 gelatin sticks, detonators, gun powder, 270 rounds of live cartridges, 24 empty magazines, Rs 3.50 lakh in cash and 744gm of gold worth Rs 19.34 lakh,” he said.

Those arrested include Pankaj Misra alias Pandit, a resident of Munger district in Bihar and a suspected firearms dealer who had been staying in Hamiltonganj for past nine months. “On June this year, Raju Rava was arrested and a carbine and two magazines containing 16 rounds of live cartridges were recovered from him,” the IGP said. “Raju had admitted that he had purchased the arms from Pandit. Since then, we were in search of him.”

The other four has been identified as Prakash Sarkar, the LIC agent from Hamiltonganj, Makshedul from Cooch Behar, Raj Kumar Paswan of Jaigaon and Amit Oraon of Satali Tea Estate.

The IGP said the possession of sophisticated arms by what apparently seemed to be a bunch of robbers was being probed.

“It is a major haul of so many sophisticated arms. We need to find out if this gang has any links with militant outfit in other states. We appreciate the work our officers and our personnel have done to round them up,” Lepcha said.