Punjab DGP orders quarterly inspection of gun houses
Darpan News Desk IANS, 18 Nov, 2022 01:57 PM
Chandigarh, Nov 18 (IANS) Close on the heels of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann directing review of all arms licenses to check the gun culture, Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav on Friday ordered a mandatory statewide inspection of shops, premises, and stocks of all gun houses on a quarterly basis.
The DGP issued directions to all police ranges, authorising gazetted officers of the police to inspect the shops, premises, and stocks of all licensed manufactures and dealers under the Arms Act.
Apart from this, the District Superintendent of Police is required to conduct at least one inspection each year, he added.
Punjab has only two per cent of India's population, while it has nearly 10 per cent of the total licensed weapons which stand at nearly 4 lakh, or 13 gun licenses for every 1,000 persons in the state.
There is a huge influx of illegal weapons from across the international border and the inter-state borders from states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
Although the weapons are illegally procured by anti-social elements, the ammunition is mostly pilfered from local gun houses of Punjab.
The DGP said there is an urgent need to enforce the basic policing practice of inspection of gun houses by gazetted police officers for which they are empowered as per the rules, so as to keep a check on the stocks and plug the pilferage of ammunition and misuse of licensed arms.
Earlier, apart from directing a review of all the existing arm licenses in the state, Chief Minister Mann had also ordered that if any licence had been issued to an anti-social element, in the past, then it must be cancelled immediately.
Similarly, it had also been ordered that no new licence should be issued generally in the next three months, adding a licence should be issued only where it is utmost and genuinely required.
The state government had also imposed a blanket ban on the public display of arms and ammunition, including on social media platforms.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday interacted with several world leaders during the ongoing 17th G20 Summit in Bali, including US and French Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron, as well as his British counterpart Rishi Sunak. The Prime Minister's Office shared several photographs of his meetings with the world leaders.
For the second time on Tuesday morning, the police team took the accused Aftab Ameen Poonawala to the Mehrauli forest area to recover the remains of the body of Shraddha Walker which the accused chopped into 35 pieces. He was first taken to the area on Monday.
The body of a man, appearing to be in his early 30s, was found stuffed in a suitcase outside the railway station in Punjab's Jalandhar city on Tuesday, police said. The police reached the spot and found a red suitcase just outside railway station.
The bench noted that after its last orders in the matter, except two meetings of the Ghaggar Standing Committee, no concrete steps have been taken by the state governments on the recommendations made by the Central Water and Power Research Station (CWPRS), Pune.
Lovingly called Chacha Nehru, Nov 14th is celebrated as Children's Day in India. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was born on November 14, 1889 in Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj). Nehru was involved in the freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and went to jail several times.
According to an Amroli police station officer, a police officer had received information that a drug peddler had concealed drugs in a shop and car in a commercial complex basement. Subsquently it carried out searches in shop number 29 and recovered the drug haul as well as Rs 2,68,000 cash.
