Gang Using FB Marketplace To Sell Illegal Firearms Busted By Delhi Police
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
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By Linus Garg
First publised on 2021-11-22 08:28:19
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
The Delhi Police has busted a racket that sold illegal arms to criminals and others over Facebook and other social media platforms. The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Ops (IFSO) unit of the force tracked the illegal sellers and apprehended them after a successful operation. Not only did they deal in arms and ammunition, they also cheated first time buyers.
The master mind is said to be one Hitesh Singh Thakur alias Langda, a resident of Jodhpur who operated on Facebook under the profile of Hirpal Singh. He is said to have tied up with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. When IFSO came across FB pages offering to sell arms during their usual social media monitoring, alarm bells started ringing. These pages displayed pictures of the arms and on communicating, the responders even shared videos and price.
IFSO officers then laid a foolproof trap by posing as buyers under fake profiles and struck a deal to buy some arms. They deposited the advance money asked for by the sellers and nabbed Thakur when he came to collect the balance in Manesar in Haryana. His mobile phone was seized and sent for forensic tests after which more clues came to fore. IFSO is investigating the case to apprehend the others.
This is a serious matter and it is good that IFSO made a breakthrough. Social media platforms have now emerged as the marketplace for selling all illegal things as criminals have realized that not many people are technologically proficient to look for them on the Dark net. The Wall Street Journal had reported this trend in 2019. Going by this trend, cyber cells and specialized units of police forces all over the country are now keeping an eye on suspicious activity on these platforms.
Criminals have become very smart and are making use of technology to remain faceless and reach a wider audience. Virtual numbers and IP address masking is not increasingly being used by these criminals. But the same technology can be used by the police to nab them as there are ways to unmask the IP addresses and track the virtual numbers. This success must now drive police forces all over the country to redouble their efforts to prevent illegal activity on social media.
