Senior officers announced on Saturday that a special task force of Bengal Police will conduct an inquiry to establish the number of firearms allegedly sold illegally from Nursing Chunder Daw & Co., a 180-old arms and ammunition establishment in Dalhousie, and to pinpoint those who acquired them.

“The three partners of the shop have been remanded in seven days of police custody. During this period, we will question them to find out the actual number of firearms that were sold illegally from the shop and to whom,” a senior special task force officer said.

“We believe a significant number of firearms were sold illegally from the shop over the past year and a half, and our efforts would be to trace them.”

On Friday, the STF arrested Subir Daw, Abhiir Daw, and Subrata Daw, partners of the firm, from their residence in north Calcutta’s Girish Park for their alleged involvement with a racket involved in the illegal sale of firearms to unauthorised persons.

“We believe the 41 guns, including single and double-barrelled firearms, that were recovered from the shop, and which did not have any documents against them, were meant to be sold to buyers illegally,” the officer said.

“We want to ascertain how many such firearms were sold in the past through our investigation. The arms that were recovered in Rahara were from this shop. So many more may have been sold from there,” the officer added.

Investigation into the seizure of a huge cache of arms and ammunition from a residential apartment in a bustling neighbourhood in North 24-Parganas’ Khardah had led the police to the gun shop in central Calcutta.

Investigators said the 41 firearms that were seized were not documented anywhere. “There is no mention of whether someone submitted them, they were bought, or they were returned from somewhere,” an officer said.

A police team landed up in Khardah last month after Madhusudan Mukherjee, a 66-year-old man living alone in the apartment, allegedly posted a photograph of firearms in a community WhatsApp group, inadvertently drawing attention to his activities.

Mukherjee told neighbours he supplied army uniforms. But a raid by Barrackpore police led to the seizure of 14 guns and rifles; 905 bullets of various bores; double- and single-barrelled rifles; bolt action rifles; 9mm and 7mm pistols; revolvers; and 16 empty magazines.

Mukherjee was arrested for illegal possession of arms and ammunition.

Following his arrest, the police apprehended several others, including alleged arms dealers from South 24-Parganas, who were identified as receivers of the illegally sourced firearms.

Investigators said many of the recovered arms traced back to the 180-year-old Dalhousie shop.

Earlier in February, the police arrested Jayanta Dutta and Shantanu Sarkar, two employees of the shop, for allegedly supplying ammunition to Haji Rashid Molla in Jibantala, South 24-Parganas.

The police seized 190 rounds of 7.65mm pistol cartridges manufactured by the Indian Ordinance Factories and a 12-bore shotgun and nine shells.

“We want to join the dots by interrogating the three partners and verifying their statements with others arrested earlier in this case,” the police officer said.