KUALA LUMPUR: Sepang Police scored two major successes recently, crippling a syndicate smuggling firearms and drugs to Sarawak and arresting 16 members of a gang that steals copper cables.
Sepang Police chief ACP Abdul Aziz Ali said today the firearms and drugs syndicate, going by the name Akiong Gang, carried out its smuggling through KL International Airport 2.
The copper cable thieves, operating as the Lam Bok Gang, had been engaged in the crime in Selangor, Perak and Johor since 2015 disguised as construction workers, he told a press conference at the Sepang Police headquarters. Elaborating on the firearms and drugs smugglers, Abdul Aziz said police arrested two men aged 33 and 35 and a woman aged 23 at a house in Taman Bukit Desa Cahaya, Kuala Lumpur, in a raid on October 10.
The raid followed the discovery of a suspicious image in the baggage of a passenger of a low-cost flight to Miri at KLIA2 on October 8, he said, adding that the passenger is believed to have fled.
“A forensic inspection of the baggage revealed a Mauser-Werke Oberndorf GMBH pistol, an ammunition magazine, five rounds of ammunition and one round of ammunition in the chamber,” he said.
The police also recovered from the bag a container with 40 rounds of 9mm ammunition, a kilogram of syabu and 493 Eramine pills, he added. He said the three suspects had been remanded until October 28, and the case was being investigated under Section 8 of the Firearms Act.
On the copper cable thieves, Abdul Aziz said Sepang police received reports on robberies at three construction sites in Cyberjaya on September 29, October 2 and October 11.
“The modus operandi in the three cases was the same, with the suspects appearing in a group wearing safety helmets and disguised as construction workers,” he said, adding that they then threatened their victims with machetes and robbed them of copper cables, cash and handphones. Abdul Aziz said that following intelligence work by police led by Sepang CID chief DSP Mohd Iqbal Ibrahim, 16 men were arrested and and various items were seized in Brickfields, Sri Petaling and Salak South on October 11, 12, 15 and 18.
They comprised five Malaysians, eight Indonesians, two Indians and a Bangladeshi, all aged between 26 and 58, he said.
The suspects were being remanded at the Sepang Police headquarters pending handing over to other police districts, he added.
