Jodhpur police arrests 7, detains juvenile; illegal arms seized

Police on Friday held eight people including a juvenile from different parts of the city and seized 18 pistols from them along with 21 live cartridges and two magazines.

The arrests were made by police teams from six police stations of the Jodhpur commissionerate, officials said.

Those arrested include Mukesh Solanki, a resident of Devas in Madhya Pradesh, who is allegedly a supplier of arms. He had reached Jodhpur early on Friday morning by bus with the cache of arms for supplying them to various persons, the officials said.

Pollice Commissioner Prafull Kumar said Solanki was on the radar of the police following interrogation of those dealing in illegal country-made arms.

"We learnt that Solanki has reached Jodhpur with a huge cache of arms and was supplying them to his contacts," said Kumar.

After arresting him from Mandore garden with six pistols, police arrested the remaining six people and held a juvenile from different parts of the city on the basis of information provided by Solanki.

Kumar said Solanki is a big supplier of arms from MP and has different social media groups for different states for supplying the arms.

"With the help of these groups, he had come in contact with a similar group from Rajasthan run by one Manoj, who connected him to local suppliers of arms in Jodhpur," Kumar said.

Solanki had allegedly visited Jodhpur earlier too and supplied arms to many persons, officials said, adding that police is now trying to get hold of the buyers.

This is the second breakthrough of the Jodhpur police in a week.

On February 9, police here arrested eight people and recovered from them 11 illegalweaponsincluding pistols, revolvers and country-made pistols apart from 17 live cartridges.