Now, family members can use same weapon with ‘addl licence’

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, December 20

To discourage the practice of owning licensed arms by each member of a family, new amendments have been made to the Arms Act that has the provision for issuing ‘additional licences’ to family members. Under this provision, if a family member is having a licensed weapon, he can seek permission to allow other members of his family to use the same weapon in case of any urgency and for that additional arms licence can be obtained from the police.

Owing to the lack of awareness among the lower-rung staff of the Police Department or among the common people, the amended provision of the Arms Act is hardly being put to use.

In order to spread awareness, a special meeting was today convened by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Dhruman Nimbale. It was attended by the heads of all 28 police stations of the commissionerate and all ACPs. At the meeting, the officials’ queries about the new amendments to the Arms Act were answered.

The DCP told The Tribune that personnel at the police station level were unaware of the amendments to the Arms Act, due to which several amendments were not being implemented in letter and in spirit. To make the staff aware of these amendments, a meeting was convened and the officials were told to pursue legal proceedings in arms licence cases as per law only.

“Since there is a provision for ‘additional licence’ now, which discourages the practice of owning arms by all members of a family, one licence can be shared by the members of a family in blood relations and they can use the same weapon in case of emergency. This will decrease the number of weapons in society. Earlier, if any family member used the weapon of the license holder, he/she used to face an FIR along with revocation of the licence,” the DCP revealed.

The DCP said the process of obtaining an additional licence was also not stringent now.

Apart from this, other amendments to the Arms Act were also discussed at the meeting. In the new Act, if anyone resorts to celebratory fire, earlier a case under Section 336, IPC, was registered and the weapon impounded. But now, a case under the Arms Act will also be registered that will follow the revocation of the arms licence.

Other amendments provides for stringent verification of a person applying for an arms licence, 1 to 3 years in jail for using a toy weapon to threaten policemen, discouraging brandishing weapons in arms free zone, transparency in issuing of all-India licence permit, maintenance of record in electronic formats and consolidation of licences, etc.