Secunderabad: The arms heist case related to the Army’s high security Secunderabad Cantonment has been cracked by the Telangana Police.
The weapons have been traced to a location in Hyderabad, the police said, as reported by The Indian Express.
Officials also confirmed that it was an insider job though further details were not provided. It has, however, come to be known that a senior Army officer has been questioned for non-maintenance of records.
The case pertains to twelve weapons, including four AK-203 assault rifles, seven pistols and an INSAS rifle.
An alarm was raised when These weapons could not be located in the armoury of the cantonment on the morning of August 31. More than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and a pair of passive night-vision binoculars were also missing from the room.
The Army registered a complaint at the Bollaram Police Station under the Malkajgiri Commissionerate. It said that the theft was detected when the ammunition storage was found open and the locks broken.
The weapons and ammunition were last physically accounted for at 6 pm on August 30, before the closing of Kote – Keeper of Technical Equipment – and Battalion Magazine, the probe into the heist revealed.
“The Kote is always guarded and the guards maintained that they had not seen a break-in. Also, when we checked the records of the armoury, it was found that these were not maintained,” a senior police official said, adding that weapons in an armoury are supposed to be accounted for each evening.
The Army questioned a senior officer from one of the units of the 20 Madras Regiment in connection with the arms heist. Later, Telangana Police officers also questioned him.
The officer was questioned because the armoury’s books or registers were allegedly not maintained for months.
