Ludhiana: Gun house owner held for illegal sale of bullets

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, September 10

The district police today arrested a gun house owner of the city on the charges of selling bullets to a person not having arms licence.

The arrested gun house owner has been identified as Gurcharan Singh Babli, owner of Verma Gun House, Nirankari market, near Bharat Nagar chowk.

Police Commissioner Naunihal Singh said on September 2 a political rally of the Shiromani Akali Dal was held at Sahnewal where a special checking was conducted at the VIP gate. During checking, a man, Kashish Adiya, was stopped for checking and his frisking led to the recovery of .32-bore (made in USA) loaded pistol having six cartridges. Kashish Adiya was then asked to produce weapon licence but he couldn’t, following which he was arrested by the Sahnewal police. A case under the Arms Act was registered against him.

16 gun houses raided in July

• Special 16 teams of the crime wing of the Ludhiana police had conducted a raid on 16 gun houses, falling under the jurisdiction of the Commissionerate in July this year.
• The development had come after the Punjab Police busted a racket in which a large number of illegal weapons, bought by gangsters from Madhya Pradesh, were recovered. But it was found that the bullets were bought illegally from gun houses.

During preliminary questioning, Kashish Adiya revealed that he had bought bullets from Verma Gun House and on the basis of the statement, owner of the gun house Gurcharan was also named in the case.

Naunihal said the gun house owner committed a crime by selling the cartridges to a person who had no arms licence and by doing this, the owner had violated the terms of the gun house licence.

Now the police have also started auditing of the gun house in which the entire record will be scanned and if any discrepancy in record is found, action will be taken accordingly.

The police have also named Manrpeet Singh Manni, who is related to Kashish, in the case.

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