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It’s an automatic rifle, no it’s a Honda City

The AK-47 has become fashionable in violence-hit Jammu and Kashmir. It was sold for Rs85,000, excluding taxes.

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The AK-47 has become fashionable in violence-hit Jammu and Kashmir. It was sold for Rs85,000, excluding taxes, at an open bidding by the transport department in Jammu on Saturday.

But this is no gun, we are talking about. It is just a registration number plate for a swanky car in Jammu! Mohammad Rafiq Mir of posh Batandi in Jammu, bought the AK-47 registration number for Rs85,000. So don’t get surprised if on a visit to Jammu you see a Honda City sporting this particular registration number.

Several people were vying for the number plate, but Mir made the highest bid, excluding Rs 22,300 in taxes, for this number. “If I needed to shell more money, I would have happily done that because I wanted this number. I am crazy about the number,” Mir said.

At a similar auction on April 7, another buyer had bid Rs29,500 for another number, AK-56 number, the advanced variant of AK-47, for his Hyundai-I10.

The Jammu regional transport office (RTO) had received a number of applications for special numbers and it was decided that they would be put for auction so that the government too earns some money.

“Several people applied for special numbers, including AK-47. But when they realised that the bid may go up, most of them opted out. It was left to three people to bid for the AK-47 number. Finally it was sold at Rs85,000 plus. The bidder has to pay Rs22,300 in taxes to complete the registration formality,” said Ramesh Chander Sharma, regional transport officer at Jammu.

“We have kept two days of the month for auction. We started the AK series of registration numbers on April 1. People wanted the AK-47 and -56 numbers.

“Whenever we get one or more applications for some number, we put it up for auction. Some people are crazy for certain numbers,” the regional transport officer said.

Sociologists attribute the fetish for weapon names to the current turmoil in the insurgency-hit state. “AK-47 has become part of our linguistic phonetics. It is so much talked about that it has become part of our life. Mostly the elite class want to sport such number as a status symbol and they can go to any extent to buy them,” said Dr Khursheed-ul-Islam, assistant professor at the Institute of Management and Public Administration.

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