West Bengal STF team arrests 3 owners of a 190-year-old gun shop over alleged illegal gun trade

The West Bengal Police Special Task Force team has arrested three owners of a 190-year-old gun shop from Kolkata. They were allegedly involved in a gun racket which was discovered after a raid at their shop on Thursday (September 4, 2025). 

The owners, Subir Daw, Abhir Daw, and Subrata Daw, partners of the gun company, are brothers from one of the oldest aristocratic families of North Kolkata. They owned Nursing Chunder Daw & Co., established in 1835 in the Dalhousie area of Kolkata, at the heart of the city.

The shop is within stone’s throw away distance from the Kolkata Police headquarters. This is a government-licensed gun shop and is overseen by the police to keep track of sales. The illegal deals have raised questions about the police oversight mechanism, and whether lapses in monitoring allowed the racket to function. 

The three men were arrested from their shop on Thursday night. 

Allegations arose that they were making illegal arms deals with unauthorised individuals from their store.

Police have said that these arrests were made after a large consignment of illegal firearms was recovered from Rahara, Khardah, under the Barrackpore Police Commissionerate last month. After the arms recovery at Rahara, the police could directly link the arms to the Nursing Chunder Daw & Co. Shop in Kolkata leading to the arrests. 

“There were 41 guns, including single-barrelled and double-barrelled firearms, which were seized from Daw’s shop. During the raids, they could not find any record of these guns,” Indrajit Basu, Superintendent of Police and head of the STF team which is leading this investigation, told The Hindu. The accused were produced in court on Friday (September 5, 2025), and have been sent to 7 days police custody as the investigation remains in progress. 

Allegations have come to light that many bullets were illegally sold to unauthorised people at hefty prices. Many licensed gun owners who used to keep their guns were also illegally sold off to others.  

During the Rahara raids, police recovered 14 guns and rifles, 905 bullets of various bores, bolt-action rifles, 9mm and 7mm pistols, and revolvers from a local resident’s house, which set the investigation in motion. 

Previous arrests 

Earlier in February, two employees of the shop, Jayanta Dutta and Santanu Sarkar, were also arrested for illegal arms trade. After multiple shootouts in and around Bengal, the police had realised that even if the arms were sourced from outside the State, many of the cartridges were from inside the State. This led to suspicion and further investigation. 

It was alleged that the two employees were working together to smuggle arms and cartridges out of the shop in Kolkata and sell them illegally to gang members at hefty profits.  

The shop was sealed off by the police after this incident. It reopened recently. The shop has been sealed again after the three brothers were arrested.