Patna SSP office accountant, two others arrested with illegal firearms in Muzaffarpur

PATNA: Patna SSP office’s clerk Ashish Kumar along with two other associates were arrested with an illegal semiautomatic country-made pistol and four live cartridges from near Motipur bus stand under Motipur police station in Muzaffarpur district on Saturday.
Police sources said the trio had planned to loot money from a customer service point (CSP) of Punjab National Bank located near the bus stand only, before which they got nabbed.
Muzaffarpur zonal IG Nayyar Hasnain Khan said two other arrested persons were identified as Shatrughan Yadav and Sonu Jha alias Ravan.
While Jha is native of Rajla village under Kurhani police station area in Muzaffarpur, Shatrughan and Ashish are residents of Shivpuri under Gardanibagh police station area in state capital.
“The trio were travelling in a brand new luxury car which was also seized along with its paper. All three were forwarded to jail on Sunday,” Khan said.
He said police had received information that Sonu was involved in looting several cash loot incidents in West Champaran and Motihari.
“Criminal antecedents of Shatrughan was being looked into. Police suspects Ashish along with the two were perhaps part of either a cash loot gang or illegal sophisticated firearm smuggling racket,” he said.
He said a routine vehicle checking was going on in the area looking at the general elections during which all were nabbed while travelling inside a luxury car along with the loaded pistol.
“Investigation were going on that since how long Ashish was involved in criminal activities behind the curtain,” he said.
Muzaffarpur SSP Manoj Kumar said that during investigation, it surfaced Ashish and Sonu were not carrying any cellphones with themselves to avoid any electronic evidence of their movement.
“Leaving cellphone at residences indicates they had some nefarious plan and wanted to avoid evidence of their involvement. They were using Shatrughan’s cellphone for making calls. Shatrugan was the vehicle’s driver,” he said adding Ashish and Shatrughan had reached Motipur from Patna.
“Ashish told police he was in need of money and had reached Motipur to meet a person while Sonu told about another person from whom they were going take money. There were discrepancies in versions,” Kumar said.
He said Ashish got job as clerk in state police on compassionate ground after his father’s death and had recently cleared an internal accounts examination after which he got posted at accountant at Patna SSP office.
Police sources said Ashish had managed to mislead police by quoting that he gathering information about a gang after being nabbed but was arrested only after direction from a top official.