By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : A 34-year-old farmer from India’s Bihar state who found that guns were the best “cash crop” and became Nepal’s leading illegal individual arms dealer has been arrested, police said Friday.
Hira Mishra, a struggling farmer in Bihar’s Sitamarhi district, became a flourishing arms dealer, smuggling firearms from India to Nepal across the porous border and selling them at NRS 90,000-100,000 per piece.
The Indian national was arrested from Kathmandu Thursday with police recovering an American pistol, a Chinese gun and several rounds of ammunition.
Police said Mishra operated on his own, without being affiliated to any armed groups.
His method of operation was simple – to buy guns from different places in India, where they were as cheap as NRS 10,000 and sell them in Nepali districts along the Indian border as well as in the capital city itself.
The arrested gun dealer reportedly told police he had been supplying arms to customers in Nepal for almost five years.
He said his clients varied from men who wanted simple country-made guns to those seeking more sophisticated submachine guns.
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at [email protected])