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By Asiri Fernando
The Police department has seized 712 illegal firearms and a stock of explosives ending a three-month long special operation this week, officials said yesterday. The operation comes in the wake of the counter-narcotics drive by the police and is mainly aimed at disarming organised criminal networks, Police Spokesman SSP Jaliya Senarathne told the Daily FT.
The firearms and explosives were seized by the Police and the Special Task Force (STF) from 6 June to 30 September. The three-month long operation netted 512 firearms, including 28 Type-56 assault rifles (commonly known as T-56), one Type-81 assault rifle, 24 pistols and 11 revolvers. In comparison, the police seized 798 firearms during 2017 and 1064 in 2018 according to police sources.
The assault rifles, pistols and revolvers are widely used by organised criminal groups and pose a significant threat to lives; both of law enforcement officers and the public, SSP Senaratne said.
“It is widely available, there is an abundance of ammunition after the war, its high rate-of-fire, penetrability through soft-skinned vehicles, a magazine capacity of 30 bullets and an easy-to-master manual of arms make the T-56 ideal for criminal use,” an STF officer said. In 2018, police seized nearly 200 of these rifles and carbines, up from a mere 34 in 2017.
Pistols and revolvers are also favoured by organized criminals due to convenience of concealment. An assortment of 9mm pistols, including Chinese-made clones of the Russian and Western models have reached the hands of criminals’ elements during the war. During and after the war, arms flowed to criminals and shady political elements through a number of means.
Four pistols seized in June following the investigation launched into a number of rouge Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) officers, have raised concern that firearms may be smuggled in to the country with narcotics. A senior police official told the Daily FT, investigators suspect that several major drug shipments that arrived in the country also included a number of pistols as part of a ‘package deal’.
According to the Police and Navy, most of the heroin that enters Sri Lanka is shipped via the ‘Makran Coast’ which runs from Pakistan to Iran. Over the last few years, the Navy and the Police have intercepted a number of ‘Dhows’ (a traditional sea-vessel from the Arabian Gulf) carrying large consignments of heroin, methamphetamines and the narcotic known as ‘ICE’ off the southern coast of Sri Lanka.
The cottage firearms industry in Pakistan is well known for craft-produced clones of many types of firearms, especially in the ‘Darra’ region. The criminal nexus between illegal arms manufactures and the drug trade is well known. The four pistols appear to look like clones of Chinese made Type-54 pistols (This type of pistol was used by the armed forces and the LTTE during the war).
This was confirmed by Armament Research Services (ARES), an Australian based specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and ammunitions field.
“The handguns pictured are most likely craft-produced copies of the Chinese Norinco Type 54 self-loading pistol produced in Pakistan. These are unusual examples, however, as the presence of both a Norinco logo and a “Pak Made” marking is irregular. It is very likely that these weapons found their way to Sri Lanka by way of Pakistan, most likely in conjunction with the illicit narcotics trade.”
A report on the four pistols by the Government Analysist is pending, the Daily FT learns. If the four pistols originated from a cottage industry source in the Pakistani tribal belt, the weapons would not carry any serial number or manufacturers markings adhering to International Armament Transfer regulations. Thereby making them untraceable, which would make them all the more appealing to organised criminals, experts said.
With Sri Lankan law enforcement agencies concerned about a possible terrorist-organized criminal nexus in relation to funds generated from the drug trade, shouldn’t the possibility of firearms being smuggled from untraceable non-state sources be a significant concern to the Sri Lankan security establishment?
In 2019, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) responding to a Right to Information (RTI) request admitted that they did not know the exact number of licenced firearms owners in the country. The MOD also stated that as the regulator, they lacked a centralised networked database of vital information on firearms licences at the time.
However, the MOD declined to respond to questions filed through an RTI this year regarding firearms licencing and progress on establishing a networked database, claiming providing such information would hinder ‘National Security’.
The Police department also seized 3,577 assorted rounds of ammunition, 666 locally manufactured firearms, 13,612 Gauge shot guns, 91 hand grenades of various makes, 161 detonators and 869 grams of explosives during the three-month long operation. They also took in to custody 642 suspects on charges related to illegal firearms and 59 suspects on charges of being in possession of explosives.
