Ghaziabad: 6 held for buying guns on fake licenses

Six people have been arrested for purchasing guns on fake licences, the police said on Sunday.

To obtain the licences, the accused paid Rs 5 to 10 lakh to an arms dealer in Shahjahanpur who was working in connivance with two clerks in the District Magistrate's office there, Superintendent of Police (SP) Shlok Kumar said.

Acting on a tip-off, the police nabbed two people, identified as Rahul Yadav and Raja Yadav, both residents of Ghaziabad, on Saturday evening near Hapur Chungi roundabout, he said.

Two pistols and the fake licenses bearing forged signatures of the issuing authority were recovered from them, Kumar said.

 

The other accused-- Narendra, Deepak, Pintoo and Pawan-- all residents of Ghaziabad, were nabbed from Lal Kuan area on Friday night, he said.

Kumar said 4 pistols and fake licenses were recovered from them and they too had purchased the weapons from the same arms dealer of Shahjahanpur.

All the six have no criminal background and they just wanted to own guns, the SP said.

He said the illegal arms racket was being run by one Hari Shankar and his accomplice Sadanad who are residents of Shajahanpur.

Shankar and Sadanad were aided by Pavensh and Shyam Bihari who are contractual employees at the Shahjahanpur collectorate.

Kumar said the gang was busted when two people applied for transfer of their gun licence to Ghaziabad after the unique identification numbers of the documents were found invalid during online verification by authorities.

He said a letter was immediately sent to DM Shajahanpur and the case was handed over to police by the Ghaziabad District Magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey.

The two contractual employees at Shahjahanpur collectorate were making back-dated fake licenses, by forging signature of the issuing officer, after the arms licenses register of 2007 somehow went missing and for which an FIR was lodged in Sehramau North police station of Shahjahanpur, Kumar said.

He said the unique identification numbers mentioned on the fake licenses were from the missing register.