In a case related to arms licence racket in Jammu and Kashmir, the CBI said they conducted searches at 40 locations including 20 gun houses.
Several district magistrates in Jammu and Kashmir had issued illegal gun licences in collaboration with arms dealers going back as far as 2012, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said on Saturday as part of their probe into an arms licence racket.
In what is believed to be India’s biggest arms licence scam, over 2.78 lakh illegal gun licences have been issued by district magistrates for money, the agency said
In a case related to arms licence racket in Jammu and Kashmir, the CBI said they conducted searches at 40 locations including 20 gun houses.
There are two IAS officers among those raided, Shahid Iqbal Choudhary and Neeraj Kumar. Secretary of Tribal Affairs, Mr Choudhary, has served as district magistrate in six districts of Jammu and Kashmir.
He claimed that no incriminating material was found during searches by CBI at his residence but admitted there were irregularities in some cases.
With ref to media reports I’ve to confirm that CBI did search my residence & found nothing incriminating in ongoing arms license probe. Media friends may note the probe covers 4 years across all distts. I am fully answerable to CBI for my tenure. Stats from my tenure are below pic.twitter.com/qhl60AFrGI
— Shahid Choudhary (@listenshahid) July 24, 2021
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The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Rajasthan Police was the first to unearth the arms licence racket in 2017. They had found criminals with licensed weapons issued by bureaucrats in Jammu and Kashmir.
The ATS had also found that in the name of Army personnel, over 3,000 licences were given based on fake documents.
While the then Peoples’ Democratic Party-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir has been accused of trying to shield the accused under the garb of a vigilance probe, after the imposition of Governor’s Rule in 2018, the then Governor NN Vohra handed over the case to CBI.
The BJP welcomed the CBI raids and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was thanked by them for acting against the corrupt who were proliferating illegal arms.
“These licences were issued during previous regimes. CBI should get to the bottom of it who all were given gun licences; who are these people in different parts of the country and Jammu and Kashmir. It should be exposed,” said Altaf Thakur, BJP spokesperson.
The CBI arrested IAS officers Kumar Rajiv Ranjan and Itrat Rafiqui in March last year, who had issued thousands of licences during their tenure as the District Magistrates of Kupwara.
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