State wants CBI probe into gun licence racket
Srinagar, September 4
The J&K Government has recommended a CBI probe into the gun licence racket after names of public officials, especially some IAS officers from the state, surfaced during investigations carried out by the Rajasthan police’s anti-terror squad (ATS), officials said on Tuesday.
The recommendation was made by the state administration headed by previous Governor NN Vohra last month, the officials said, adding that the state’s vigilance branch has been asked to carry out the probe on the basis of the findings of Rajasthan’s ATS until the CBI takes over the case.
However, the CBI, after perusing the documents handed over to the agency by the state government, sent further queries and was awaiting its response, officials said. The CBI has asked the state government to furnish some relevant documents before it considers filing of a case to probe the issuance of 4.29 lakh arms licences in the last one decade from various districts of the militancy-hit state, they said.
The nexus between bureaucrats-middlemen-arms dealers was unravelled by the Rajasthan ATS last year.
Over 50 people, including the brother of an IAS officer, have been arrested in the case so far. A majority of the arms licences were given to people who do not belong to J&K on the basis of forged documents, the officials said.
The CBI has also told the state government about its officials’ non-cooperation with the Rajasthan ATS and indicated that some senior bureaucrats might also be questioned during the investigations. According to the ATS officials, 1,32,321 of the 1,43,013 gun licences in Jammu region’s Doda, Ramban and Udhampur districts were issued to those residing outside the state.
The figure for the entire state was 4,29,301. Of them, just 10 per cent were issued to the state’s residents.
Senior officials in the Governor’s office said action would be taken against all those guilty of issuing fake licences. Rajasthan ATS officials said initially they were not aware of the magnitude of the case and its serious ramifications when they began the operation, code-named ‘Jubaida’. A sample survey of licences issued from Kupwara, a frontier district in north Kashmir, showed that no files or registers were maintained by the district authorities and many of the arms licences might have been issued to outsiders on the basis of forged documents. Rajasthan’s Director General of Police OP Galhotra has also recommended a CBI probe into the gun-licensing racket and suggested “transfer of the case to the CBI without any further delay”. The state police chief said the case pertains to the issuance of arms licences in a “fraudulent manner by various authorities in Jammu and Kashmir”. — PTI
