Fake gun licences racket busted in Jammu

Fake gun licences racket busted in Jammu
PRASHANT SOOD

JAMMU, DEC 17: Virendra Yadav alias Pappu, brother of Vikas Yadav, an accused in the Jessica Lal murder case, has not had his gun license issued either at his native place of Sambhal in UP or in Delhi where his father D P Yadav, a Rajya Sabha MP, lives. He has got it issued in Jammu – a forged license on a fake address.

The Crime Branch officials in Jammu have unearthed a big racket involved in issuing forged gun licences, mostly to suspected criminals, operating in places as far as Uttar Pradesh, MP, Bihar and Maharashtra.

Officials said that more than 2,000 forged licences of all-India validity had been issued between 1995 and 1997. Five persons including two gun dealers and a judicial clerk have been arrested so far.

According to S R Dutta, SP, Crime, Virender Yadav's licence mentions his address merely as Shastri Nagar, Jammu. The records do not even mention the date on which the licence had been issued.

Dutta said that the racket involving two Jammu-based gun dealers, Joginder Kumar Mehra ofJammu and Kashmir Arms and Manvinder Singh Anand of Suresh Armoury, was operating in connivance with a judicial clerk Surjit Singh. It was Singh who would either fake the signature of the issuing authorities or prepare fictitious notes of the state Home Department in which instructions were given to the Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, to issue all India licences to a group of persons.

He said that contacts of the Jammu-based gun dealers in UP, MP or Bihar would approach them here with the names of persons who had to be issued licences. The gun dealers reportedly charged at least Rs 2,000 for every licence, part of which went to Surjit's pocket. And as part of the deal, they would also sell the weapon to the applicant at an exaggerated price.Dutta said that in many cases, handwriting on the registers seized from the DC office and on the application forms for licences was the same. ``The forms were either filled by the gun dealers or by Surjit'', he said.

Pointing to the gross irregularities in the maintenanceof registers, Dutta said that the entries had even been made in a manner that made it impossible to identify the person who had been issued the licence. k``All photographs have been clubbed together on one page and in certain cases even the dates and types of weapons issued have also not been mentioned '', the SP said.

He said that CID and police verification of the antecedents of the applicant, which is the established practice for issuing a licence, had not been done in any of the cases.