The fascinating tale of homemade weapons
Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 2:28 pm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 395113.cms
The fascinating tale of homemade weapons
All you need to make a desi weapon is a galvanized pipe, a few rivets and a spring mechanism. Ballistics experts have interesting tales to tell about desi weapons. DFS handles around 500 cases of firing every year, of which 85% are carried out using countrymade weapons. "Some weapons are really weird. We recently got an 'instrument' from Mahuva near Bhavnagar that looked like a wooden club with lots of rubber wrapped around it. When we studied the mechanism, we found that it used two heavy-duty springs to release ball bearings at high velocity. It could kill smaller animals and injure a human," said H M Patel, scientific officer (ballistics) at DFS. Forensic experts said most times the guns are made to suit 8 mm and 12-gauge cartridges, as the firearms of these calibre are widely used by security agency personnel and their bullets are easily available. "We, however, process a wide range of bullets including 9mm, .65, .32, .38 and .22.
Sometimes we also find the bullets with wooden caps. It is seen when a lower calibre cartridge is used in higher calibre gun, i.e. .32 bullet used in.38 mm gun such a cap is used. With such methods, it becomes difficult to identify the right weapon," said Hitesh Sanghavi, assistant director, DFS. While many of the guns that come to DFS are good-quality replicas of foreign brands such as Makarov and Glock, others are just the work of local ironsmiths mainly from the belt between Meerut and Bareilly in north India. Some of the 'masterpieces' handled by DFS include a double-barrel gun with two different bore sizes, revolvers that users have to cock to load and trick pistols. The last category has a personalized touch. "Recently we got a single-load gun that can be loaded only after the user swings the trigger guard. In another version, if other user tries to fire it without tapping the barrel, the gun will misfire," said a senior DFS official.
TIMESOFINDIA.COM
The fascinating tale of homemade weapons
All you need to make a desi weapon is a galvanized pipe, a few rivets and a spring mechanism. Ballistics experts have interesting tales to tell about desi weapons. DFS handles around 500 cases of firing every year, of which 85% are carried out using countrymade weapons. "Some weapons are really weird. We recently got an 'instrument' from Mahuva near Bhavnagar that looked like a wooden club with lots of rubber wrapped around it. When we studied the mechanism, we found that it used two heavy-duty springs to release ball bearings at high velocity. It could kill smaller animals and injure a human," said H M Patel, scientific officer (ballistics) at DFS. Forensic experts said most times the guns are made to suit 8 mm and 12-gauge cartridges, as the firearms of these calibre are widely used by security agency personnel and their bullets are easily available. "We, however, process a wide range of bullets including 9mm, .65, .32, .38 and .22.
Sometimes we also find the bullets with wooden caps. It is seen when a lower calibre cartridge is used in higher calibre gun, i.e. .32 bullet used in.38 mm gun such a cap is used. With such methods, it becomes difficult to identify the right weapon," said Hitesh Sanghavi, assistant director, DFS. While many of the guns that come to DFS are good-quality replicas of foreign brands such as Makarov and Glock, others are just the work of local ironsmiths mainly from the belt between Meerut and Bareilly in north India. Some of the 'masterpieces' handled by DFS include a double-barrel gun with two different bore sizes, revolvers that users have to cock to load and trick pistols. The last category has a personalized touch. "Recently we got a single-load gun that can be loaded only after the user swings the trigger guard. In another version, if other user tries to fire it without tapping the barrel, the gun will misfire," said a senior DFS official.
TIMESOFINDIA.COM
