Kolkata: Flyer held with pistol, bullets

KOLKATA: An alarm was sounded at Kolkata airport on Friday morning, when a pistol with a magazine containing seven bullets were detected in a hand bag during the routine X-ray prior to boarding flights. With Kolkata and other airports on high alert against a possible terror strike following the Pulwama attack, the detection created a stir.

After preliminary interrogation, the passenger was booked under the Arms Act 1959.


CISF assistant sub-inspector Mritunjay Singh, who was scanning the contents of the bags as they passed through the X-ray machine, bolted upright when the gun and bullets showed up on the monitor. He had spotted stray bullets in bags earlier but never a pistol and bullets, that too in a passenger’s cabin bag. The bag was immediately recovered from the X-ray conveyor belt and set aside for the owner to step forward.

Meanwhile, Bablu Kumar Mundu, resident of Bachra — a colliery township in Chatra district of Jharkhand — cleared frisking and turned up at the Xray portal to collect his bag. He was booked on an IndiGo flight to Chennai that was to depart at 8.06am. When he pointed to the bag, CISF officers asked how and why he was carrying the gun and bullets. He failed to provide a satisfactory answer. Arms and ammunition are strictly prohibited in cabin luggage. According to sources, the 39-year-old construction contractor said the pistol and bullets were there by mistake and that he couldn’t remember when and how it had been put in the bag. He was also unable to produce a licence for the gun.

“A .32 pistol and seven 7.65 calibre bullets were seized. We have handed them over, along with the passenger, to local police,” a CISF officer said.