SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Four guns and over 300 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion were seized by Cen­tral po­lice yes­ter­day af­ter they raid­ed a Cunu­pia house.The sus­pect who had been car­ry­ing the bag with the guns man­aged to es­cape.Head of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Se­nior Supt John­ny Abra­ham said po­lice had a house at Poui Dri­ve, Home­land Gar­dens, un­der sur­veil­lance and moved in ear­ly yes­ter­day.

He said as the po­lice ap­proached they saw an oc­cu­pant of the house with a bag in his hand but the sus­pect dropped the bag and ran. An ar­rest war­rant has been is­sued for him. Po­lice al­so found three bul­let­proof vests which ap­peared to be sim­i­lar to those is­sued to po­lice.

Abra­ham said po­lice al­so found an AR 15 au­to­mat­ic ri­fle, a light­weight, 5.56 mm cal­i­bre, mag­a­zine-fed, air-cooled ri­fle with a ro­tat­ing-lock bolt; an Is­raeli mi­ni UZI se­mi-au­to­mat­ic ri­fle, which is ca­pa­ble of fir­ing 600 rounds a minute of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion; an MK1 ma­chine gun and a .357 mag­num with a scope.

Cen­tral po­lice al­so ar­rest­ed 35 peo­ple for var­i­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, rob­bery and out­stand­ing war­rants. In a sep­a­rate raid, the Or­gan­ised Crime and Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau said they de­stroyed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 27,500 ful­ly-grown mar­i­jua­na trees in the Biche for­est on Tues­day.

Po­lice went to the area and found the plan­ta­tion near a ranch dur­ing an erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise which be­gan at 9 am and end­ed at 3 pm. They al­so seized close to 32 kilo­grammes of cured mar­i­jua­na on the ranch. No one was ar­rest­ed. The ex­er­cise was led by In­sp Ken Lutch­man and Cpl Gar­cia.