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Cao Pi
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Tuesday August 31, 2010
Man with home-made rifles held
By AUSTIN CAMOENS
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JOHOR BARU: With a budget of only RM400 and armed with a skill he picked up while serving in the armed forces, a retired army personnel managed to assemble two air rifles. The 50-year-old man then stashed the rifles under a kitchen cabinet in his house near Jalan Gunung Ledang, Kampung Relau, Tangkak.
However, police raided the house following a public tip-off on Friday and confiscated the firearms and detained him. When he was arrested, the man claimed he was unaware that assembling firearms on his own was against the law. Johor police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Mohd Mokhtar Mohd Shariff said the man, however, did not say what he planned to do with the rifles.
He has been remanded until Sept 2. “Policemen searching the suspect’s house found the rifles under a cabinet in his kitchen,” he told a press conference at the state police headquarters yesterday.
DCP Mohd Mokhtar said the man who retired from the army in 1994 did not have any criminal record. “We believe that the man has the expertise to assemble these weapons and he can do so with a minimal budget of RM400,” he said.
He said the case was being investigated under Section 8(a) of the Firearms Act 1960 and if found guilty, the man could be jailed up to seven years or fined RM10,000 or both. In an unrelated case, a pistol with four live bullets was discovered in an oil palm plantation near Muar on Saturday.
The Colt Super Automatic .22 pistol and the live ammunition which were buried in the plantation was found by the plantation owner following soil erosion. DCP Mohd Mokhtar said the pistol had been set for ballistic tests to check if it had been used in crime.
