Alfa Carbine rifles cut down to pistols, ammunition and cash were found in the possession of Kishor Chandra Singh during Operation Carbine in 2022.
Photo / NZ Police
Alfa Carbine rifles cut down to pistols, ammunition and cash were found in the possession of Kishor Chandra Singh during Operation Carbine in 2022.
Photo / NZ Police
A former drug dealer is back in jail after paying firearms licence holders to buy him 21 rifles, which he cut down into pistols to sell into the criminal underworld.
Police believed the weapons, obtained in Napier between March and May last year, were destined for Auckland, where there was a spike in gang-related gun crime in the following months.
Kishor Chandra Singh, 52, appeared in the Napier District Court having pleaded guilty to nine charges including unlawful possession of firearms, possession of ammunition, possessing cannabis for supply, cultivating cannabis, possessing methamphetamine for supply, receiving, and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Judge Russell Collins sentenced him to 6½ years in prison.
Singh is a former member of the Hells Angels, who was jailed for eight years and 11 months in 2012 for supplying methamphetamine.
The court was told on Friday that he managed to go straight initially after being released in 2016, but was netted by an electronic surveillance operation called Operation Carbine last year.
Operation Carbine began in March 2022 and identified Singh as being responsible for obtaining Alfa Carbine firearms, modifying them and selling them on.
“Anyone in the market for a sawn-off firearm can only have criminal intent,” Judge Collins said.
Alfa Carbine rifles, available in 9mm, .357 and .22 calibres, are easily cut down into pistols, making them illegal but appealing to gangs and organised criminal groups.
Police say they have seized numerous cut-down Alfa Carbines in recent years.
Although the length of a rifle in their unmodified state, they have a pistol-style grip and a chambered cylinder like a revolver.
Kishor Singh in the Napier High Court in 2012 after being convicted of methamphetamine dealing.
Singh, who does not hold a firearms licence, organised five associates who had licences to buy 21 carbines from a bona fide retailer, Gun City in Napier, over 10 dates from March to May 2022.
The total cost of the 21 weapons was $47,390 but Singh paid his associates $500 for each of them, according to a Crown summary of facts.
“Intercepted communications of an associate’s phone indicated that the weapons and ammunition were destined for Auckland, where a spike of gang-related gun crimes occurred in May and June 2022,” the summary said.
Police searched Singh’s home, vehicle and workshop in Hastings, and a storage unit he rented in Taupō, on August 10, 2022.
In Hastings, they found 7.3 grams of methamphetamine, 9 kilograms of packaged cannabis head, 1.5kg of cannabis scraps, a cut-down Ruger .22 rifle and loaded magazines. They found and seized $6000 from the house.
In the workshop, they found a Bobcat MT100 skid steer loader and tandem trailer, valued at $67,000, which had been stolen a week earlier.
In the Taupō storage unit, they found two Alfa Carbines with the stocks cut off and the barrels shortened, and the serial numbers ground off.
They found 36 cannabis plants growing in the storage unit, along with $50,000 in cash.
Crown prosecutor Cameron Stuart said Singh was at the top of the gun-buying scheme, which he called a “guaranteed danger to society”. He was assisted by two close associates who then “found lackeys to do his bidding”.
“Mr Singh is very much the mastermind of this operation,” Stuart said.
Defence counsel Roger Philip said that Singh did “really well” and was a productive member of the community for a while after his release from prison in 2016.
“He accepts what he does was wrong. His world has collapsed around him.”
Several other people allegedly involved in the operation are being dealt with separately by the courts.
