Chandigarh: Three illegal pistols, six magazines and 25 live cartridges were found on a man in Hisar Thursday. One of the pistols, the police say, was a Zigana, made in Turkey. This was the fourth Zigana found in Hisar in five weeks.
Moreover, the same make of pistol was used to fire at actor Tiger Shroff’s car, in the attack on Ratan Lubana, brother of BJP leader Narendra Lubana, in Panchkula, and, according to investigators, in some of the country’s most talked-about killings recently. Police say it has become the weapon gangsters and shooters ask for by name.
Shubham, a Hisar resident, was picked up by a team of the state’s Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) near Gangwa village, the ancestral village of Haryana cabinet minister Ranbir Gangwa, after a tip-off. Shubham has been booked under the Arms Act at Azad Nagar police station. The police will seek his remand to find out where the weapons came from, according to a press note issued on 29 October.
A police officer said arrested shooters tell the police the same story every time. The weapons, they say, come from Madhya Pradesh, through a network operating out of Burhanpur, Dhar, Khargone, Barwani and Sendhwa. Locally assembled copies of Turkish pistols are allegedly made and sold in these areas.
Zigana is a line of semi-automatic pistols made by Turkish firearms company TİSAŞ, short for Trabzon Silah Sanayi A. Ş. The company is known the world over for its small arms.
Why Zigana?
So why has this pistol become the weapon of choice for criminals in India? A senior Haryana Police officer said it comes down to three things: It works, it is easy to hide and it has a good reputation. A cheap country-made pistol can jam or misfire at the wrong moment, he said, and a shooter on a contract killing cannot afford that.
The Zigana, in contrast, is known among criminals as a gun that does not jam and does not heat up even after several rounds. And it is compact enough to be carried without drawing attention.
Then there is the name. Every time a Zigana is used in a high-profile case, the officer said, word spreads through jail barracks and gang chats, and the next shooter wants the same weapon. The price has also stopped being a barrier. An original can cost Rs 7 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, but those assembled in Madhya Pradesh are bought for Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh and sold on for Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh.
Surfaced in multiple cases
Hisar alone has seen at least four recoveries in about five weeks. On 22 September, the CIA Mill Gate team arrested a man from Satrod Kalan with two Turkish pistols, 75 live cartridges and three magazines. Later, the Sadar police arrested Jasbir alias Jassu, a resident of Kharar Alipur, with a Turkish-made .32 bore Zigana worth Rs 2.5 lakh. The Gangwa arrest came on Thursday.
The weapon has also surfaced in cases far from Hisar. About four months ago, the police recovered Zigana pistols from two shooters who had fired at Ratan Lubana, brother of BJP leader Narendra Lubana, in Panchkula. The police say the weapons were sent by Shakeel Ansari, a handler of the Rohit Godara gang.
Zigana pistols have also been linked to the firing at Tiger Shroff’s car. Sources in the Mumbai Crime Branch say the accused, acting on the instructions of Anil Pandit of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, bought the pistol and 20 cartridges in Amritsar for Rs 2.5 lakh. Police and investigators have also linked the make of pistol to the killings of gangster Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf in Prayagraj and of former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique in Mumbai.
Pistols of this kind, such as the Zigana and the PX5 (manufactured in Pakistan), are banned for civilians in India. But not all of those used in recent crimes in India are assembled.
Another Haryana Police officer told ThePrint that the pistols coming from Madhya Pradesh, while assembled, look original. But the police have also received inputs that genuine Turkish-made Zigana pistols are reaching Haryana from Punjab, where they are dropped by drones from Pakistan.
Investigators say such weapons also enter the country through Nepal, and interstate smugglers then carry them onward, including along the Malwa and Sendhwa route in Madhya Pradesh.
The second officer cited the Tiger Shroff case. Kunal, one of the accused from Sonipat, was handed the Zigana pistol in Amritsar through a dead letter box (covert, pre-arranged location where secret packages or documents are left for someone else to retrieve later), he said.
The Madhya Pradesh end of the chain is harder to break.
Ashutosh Bagri, Superintendent of Police, Burhanpur, told ThePrint that he could not comment on the origin of the weapons seized in Haryana in recent days. But he confirmed that a community called the Sikligar, in his region, has traditionally dealt in illegal arms.
“We have arrested those involved in this illicit business on several occasions and have recovered Zigana pistols from them as well,” Bagri said. “However, they have been involved in this trade for generations, and they also make illicit weapons in the jungles of the area.”
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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