Baby kumari, Former Member of Legislative Assembly, Bihar

According to a senior NIA official, Hulas Pandey, a former Janata Dal-United (JD-U) MLC and currently a Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader, has emerged as a figure with the underworld as his elder brother Narendra Pandey a.k.a. Sunil Pandey, a former JD-U MLA from Piro in Bhojpur district of Bihar, was once a close aide of criminal-turned-politician from Siwan, Mohammad Shahabuddin, who is currently lodged in Delhi's high-security Tihar jail.An NIA official said that Hulas Pandey's brother Sunil Pandey was a close associate of Shahabuddin in the 1990s.Sunil Pandey is also one of the founders of the upper caste Ranveer Sena militia, which was accused of carrying out massacres in several parts of Bihar in the 90s.According to the NIA official, Sunil Pandey had flashed his AK-47 rifle in 1994 in Bihar's Bhojpur during one of the meetings of the Ranveer Sena.The official said that the police had earlier also recovered an AK-47 rifle from a close associate of Sunil Pandey.Sunil Pandey parted ways with Shahabuddin after the murder of one Mohammad Sillu.After severing his links with Shahabuddin, Sunil Pandey ventured into the business of sand mining and also entered politics. He became an MLA as an independent candidate in 2000 and then joined the Samata Party, which was later named as JD-U. Sunil Pandey then won three Assembly elections till 2010. He lost the seat in 2015.The official further said that NIA has found links of the Pandey brothers with Uttar Pradesh's criminal-turned-politican Brijesh Singh.Following his brother's entry into politics, Hulas Pandey also entered politics and became a JD-U MLC and also looked after the sand mining business.The case relates to recovery of 22 AK-47s rifles in Munger smuggled from the Central Ordnance Depot in Jabalpur in September, 2018. The matter came to light on August 28, 2018 when the Munger police arrested a man identified as Mohammad Imran with three AK-47 rifles.The NIA raided 12 locations in Bihar's Patna, Buxar, Bhojpur, Rohtas and Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi on Thursday and recovered cash worth Rs 29 lakh and also seized one rifle along with various cartridges, four laptops, five hard disks, 12 pen drives, 12 mobile phones and one computer.The police had recovered three more weapons from an arms dealer, Shamsher Alam. After their interrogation, the Munger police recovered 12 more AK-47 rifles from a well in Mirzapur village of Munger district on September 28.The police then arrested a retired army jawan, Niyazur Rehman, from New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal.In September, 2018, Munger police had arrested Purushottam Lal Rajak, a retired employee of the Central Ordnance Depot at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, for transporting AK-47 assault rifles and spare parts to criminals in Munger.Rajak had earlier confessed to having sold 70 assault rifles to arms suppliers and Maoists in Munger district from 2012 to 2018.According to NIA officials, the weapons and their parts were smuggled from the Jabalpur COD by its employees and then sold to the criminals and Maoists in several Bihar districts.The NIA took over the case from the Bihar Police in October 2018 following orders from the Union Home Ministry.The official said it also recovered incriminating documents, including cash receipts and bank details from the residence of Hulas Pandey and his associatesThe NIA has so far arrested 15 accused in the case. The agency has also chargesheeted nine accused including kingpin of the racket Rajak, Suresh Thakur, Imran Alam and Niyajul Rahman.The NIA official further said that it is also working on the call records of the Pandey brothers to go deeper and find their connection with the Maoists and the underworld.(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@.in)( With inputs from IANS )

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