Bengaluru,  Bengaluru's Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths under joint commissioner of police (Crime) Sandeep Patil, conducted a raid at Bengaluru central prison in the wee hours of Saturday and seized huge cache of lethal weapons, narcotics substances and mobile phones from notorious criminals lodged in the jail.

According to sources, the CCB sleuths have got more than 40 lethal weapons including swords, machete, daggers, knives, and scissors from the inmates in the prison.

The officials also seized ganja, and ganja smoking pipes (Chillums), mobile phones and pen drives from the possession of notorious criminals.

According to an official who was part of the raid, the inmates who were having weapons, contraband and mobile phones will be questioned in detail.

"We will be taking up cases against the inmates for having weapons and drugs. Since they are already in prison they will be questioned in the jail itself and cases under Arms Act, NDPS Act will be registered against respective prisoners," the officer told reporters.

He added that they were also verifying the role of the prison authorities for allowing so many rowdies to have weapons, drugs, and mobile phones.

"These lethal sharp weapons were found with notorious rowdies, as of now they have confessed that they had weapons for their self-defence from other rowdies," a senior officer said.

The seized mobile phones, pen drives will be sent to forensic science laboratories (FSL) for further analysis and to get information about the associates of the rowdies and their activities, the officer added.

The CCB sleuths said that the search is still on in the central prison.

Bangaluru Central Jail, which is also known as Parappana Agrahara Central Prison, is the largest prison in Karnataka, which can officially accommodate 2200 inmates, however, it is always occupied above its official sanctioned capacity. At present there are around 2,700 inmates, which came down from the average 4,500 inmates prior to the outbreak of the pandemic in March last year.