Gunrunner bares link with sikligar-goons to ‘kill’ Varun

INDORE: Sustained questioning of high-profile inter-state gunrunner Mahendra Pal Singh Jat has revealed a direct link between gunrunners of MP and Etawah district.
Interrogation of Jat, who hails from Mathura district in Uttar Pradesh exposed a nexus between Etawah-based criminals, gunrunners and sikligar, the nomads from MP’s Malwa-Nimar region who are into making of arms and gunrunning for generations.
Jat, who was in a jail in Agra since November 2014 and was brought for interrogation by MP police’s special task force recently, himself is a crucial player of sikligar-Etawah link.
Key sources in MP STF said Jat has made a startling revelation about sikligars of Malwa-Nimar are no more into making semi-automatic pistols, but graduated to fashioning semi-automatic carbines, used by professional criminals in UP, Bihar, Haryana and Delhi.
One of carbines made by sikligars from MP was obtained by Jat from Etawah-based criminal Sanju in 2009. Importantly, a set of sample carbine was shown to Jat by Bheel courier of Barwani-based sikligar on a riverbank in Sendhwa area on MP-Maharashtra border, a few days before one of those carbines was actually delivered by Sanju to Jat for Rs 28,000. The same carbine was supplied later to Delhi-Haryana-based goon Baldish from whom two sharp-shooters of D-Company/Chota Shakeel gang had sourced pistols to eliminate BJP MP Varun Gandhi during his court appearance in Pilibhit in UP, sources said.
The two pistols were made by sikligars from MP and MP STF is now trying to find out if a carbine delivered in Etawah was to be used by D-Company shooters. They were arrested before they were to execute their Karachi-based master Chota Shakeel’s plan to kill Varun Gandhi. DSP MP STF DK Tiwari said Jat was on STF radar since July 2013, when two sikligars from Khargone district were arrested from Indore with 8 pistols and large number of cartridges. The cartridges were supplied to the duo by Jat at Rs 200-Rs 300 per cartridge.
“Since then we were on a lookout for Jat, who was then operating from a hideout in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan. He has been brought from Agra Jail now on production warrant and will be in STF custody till Jan 27,” sub-inspector of MP STF in Indore SK Pandey told TOI. During the interrogation, the cops are now trying to find out sources from whom Jat secured large number of cartridges and swapped them with guns made by sikligars of MP and gunrunners of Munger-Bihar.