As many as 40 persons were arrested for allegedly possessing illegal arms and around 50 arms and 20 bullets were seized following coordinated raids by the state police and the CID in districts, including a few adjoining Calcutta, on Tuesday.

Senior CID officers said eight persons each were arrested in areas covered by the Baruipur and Basirhat police districts and five each in the Diamond Harbour police district and areas under the Barrackpore and Howrah police commissionerates.

“Most of the accused were found carrying loaded pipe guns. Not all those who were arrested were from nearby areas. Rabi Thapa, from Bhadreswar in Hooghly, was arrested in Narendrapur’s Dinesh Nagar More for carrying a pipe gun and four bullets,” said a senior police officer.

Some of the accused, the officer said, were arrested after they had assembled
for committing dacoity, while others were intercepted while they were on their way to meet associates to commit a crime.

“In Jibantala, in the Barupiur police district, three men were arrested during a raid near the Lal Tank area. They had gathered with arms to commit a dacoity,” the officer said.

Police officers said the raids were conducted based on specific intelligence about suspected criminals across districts.

The arrests came within days of two senior Trinamool Congress leaders — Calcutta’s mayor Firhad Hakim and MP Saugata Roy — questioning the role of the police following a failed attempt on party councillor Sushanta Ghosh’s life in Kasba on Friday night.

Ghosh, the councillor of Ward 108 and chairman of borough XII, was speaking to acquaintances in front of his house in Kasba’s Rajdanga on Friday night when a man, later identified as Yuvraj Singh, got off a scooter and tried to fire at him. The gun did not fire.

Investigations so far have revealed that hired killers from Bihar had reached the city on an assignment to kill Ghosh. The arms they carried had also arrived from Bihar.

“Bengal is not a place for criminals. How come arms are making their way into the state? Where is the intelligence? The family and the party would have suffered a loss had the councillor been murdered. Where is the network?” Hakim had said a day after the failed attempt.

“I will tell the police — ‘act now’.”

On Monday, Roy, the Trinamool MP from Dum Dum, echoed Hakim’s concerns.

“I have known Sushanta for long. Police get their salaries. They have done good work during the Puja. But how come 9mm pistols are reaching the city from Bihar? This is a cause of worry,” Roy had said while addressing a meeting of party workers.