Hundreds of Mumbai residents possess national gun licences fraudulently procured from other states, including Delhi.
Demand high among bar managers and security guards in city
MUMBAI: Hundreds of Mumbai residents possess national gun licences fraudulently procured from other states, including Delhi. This came to light after an inquiry was set up against the arms licensing department of the Delhi Police for fraudulently issuing national gun licences to at least 300 individuals in the past four years (full report, p11).
An enquiry by DNA found that most of these individuals are from Mumbai. The enquiry found that Delhi is not the only state from where Mumbai’s residents acquire licences. They have also tapped UP, Bihar, and Punjab.
Contrary to what you may think, however, many of the individuals who have acquired these licences are not outlaws. They are bar managers and private security guards.
Police believe they take recourse to dubious means to procure gun licences because the legal procedure is lengthy. “Besides,” one officer said, a person seeking a gun licence has to prove that his/her security is threatened. Generally, bar managers and private guards fail to prove this.
But a gun licence is critical for a bar manager or security guard because it guarantees a hefty salary increase. “The salary of a security guard gets doubled,” additional director-general of police (DGP) Hemant Karkare, chief of Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad, said. “Similarly, a bar manager’s stock rises if he carries a gun.”
Simply put, a gun licence boosts a security guard’s or bar manager’s CV. For a bar manager, a gun could mean a difference of a whopping Rs50,000 in his monthly salary.
The licences are fake because a person can seek a licence only from the state in which he or she is domiciled. Moreover, the legal route of securing a national licence is through the office of the lieutenant governor in Union territories or the office of the DGP in states.
Though mostly bar managers and private security guards have acquired the licences, police and other law-enforcing agencies are concerned because the licences could be acquired by outlaws as well. “I won’t take names, but members of the underworld have acquired gun licences from Uttar Pradesh,” said additional DGP Karkare. “We have found that none of these characters lives in UP. Clearly something is wrong here.”
According to a police officer, who did not wish to be identified, the racket works in two easy steps. The first is to secure a fraudulent licence from the gun-licensing department of the police in one of the states mentioned earlier. This is accomplished by paying a bribe of up to Rs2 lakh.
The next step is to apply for registration of the licence in Mumbai, which is usually done because the police force of one state does not normally counter the decision of the police of another state.
There is no central database that helps state police forces to track the movements of arms licensees. In Mumbai, for instance, there are many such licensees who never tell the local police about their licences.
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