Only 3,636 bullets missing from police battalion: Kerala Crime Branch contradicts CAG

The state Crime Branch, which is probing the alleged disappearance of 12,061 live cartridges from the Special Armed Police Battalion in Thiruvananthapuram, conducted an inspection on Monday and said only 3,636 bullets were found missing.

The Comptroller and Auditor General report had stated 12,061 live cartridges were found missing in a joint verification in the Bell-of-Arms of the SAPB with the Assistant Commandant.

Crime Branch chief Tomin Thachankary told reporters that they found only 3,636 live cartridges were missing and not 12,061.

"We are not investigating the CAG. The Crime Branch had asked the battalion to present the live cartridges with them and they presented this much. Probably, it would not have been presented before the CAG. We are not questioning the CAG. We conducted investigation in the matter," Thachankary said.

According to the CAG report, 25 INSAS rifles were also missing from the SAPB.

However, the Crime Branch had conducted a physical examination and found there were 647 INSAS automatic rifles of the total 660 at the SAPB camp with the remaining 13 found to be issued to the armed force battalion under training in Manipur.

The Crime Branch on Monday inspected live cartridges of SLR, INSAS and AK 47 rifles and found that instead of 12,061 as claimed to be missing in the CAG report, only 3,636 were missing.

The CAG has reported that 1,417 INSAS bullets were missing but the Crime Branch said the battalion presented all of them.

The Crime Branch said 3,627 SLR bullets were missing as against the 8,998 mentioned by the CAG.

The Crime Branch also claimed that instead of 1,576 AK47 bullets missing as pointed out by the CAG, only nine were missing.

There was shortage of 250 9-mm Drill Cartridges, which was "covered up" with dummy cartridges, the CAG report on General and Social sector for the fiscal ending March 31, 2018 had said.

A senior crime branch official said the investigation team managed to bring back bullets that were taken to various parts of the state for training purposes for inspection.

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