oppn parties Gang Using FB Marketplace To Sell Illegal Firearms Busted By Delhi Police

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  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
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  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
Gang Using FB Marketplace To Sell Illegal Firearms Busted By Delhi Police

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2021-11-22 08:28:19

About the Author

Sunil Garodia 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.

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.