GURGAON: A 22-year-old trainee who joined a Faridabad police station for tech support last winter didn’t make an impression. It was only in the summer that his real talent became evident. Suddenly, everyone was looking for Monu.The search ended this weekend when the 22-year-old ITI apprentice posted at Sector 8 police station in Faridabad was arrested after it came to light that he had stolen 32 weapons — including foreign-made pistols — from the ‘malkhana’ (the room where seized items, evidence and records are stored) over six months of his apprenticeship and routed them to an inter-state illegal network.
The theft also exposed loopholes in malkhana security, but that is unlikely to be mitigating factor for Monu, who is among 20 people arrested after police tracked down the weapons and recovered all of them from different parts of Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP.The 20 include those who bought the guns.Police said the theft remained undetected from Oct 2025 to April 2026 even as the weapons were quietly smuggled out of Sector 8 police station and sold across multiple cities.The malkhana discrepancy came to light during an inspection by station manager Rajbir Singh on May 9, when mismatches in the weapon register were noticed. “Initial verification showed some weapons missing. A detailed audit later revealed 32 firearms had disappeared,” an officer said.An FIR was registered under sections related to theft, criminal breach of trust, destruction of evidence and criminal conspiracy, following which crime branch teams from Sector 30 were tasked with tracing the weapons.Police commissioner Satendra Kumar Gupta monitored the probe. ASI Bijender Singh, who was in charge of the armoury, was suspended for negligence, and a departmental inquiry was initiated against him.Police have also initiated a probe to ascertain whether there was larger collusion in the theft.
