M A I N   N E W S

CBI raids DC’s office in Jammu

Jammu, January 12
The CBI conducted a raid on the office of a Deputy Commissioner here and seized records regarding issuing of gun licences and official stamps of senior officers, highly placed official sources said today.

As many as 163 gun licences, 623 files and three despatch registers of 1994-98 were seized by the CBI team in the raid yesterday, the sources said adding that some employees of the section dealing with gun licences were also questioned in this connection. However no arrests have been made in this regard.

The CBI team seized 14 stamps of former Additional Deputy Commissioners, 20 copies of gun licence records and application forms, they said, adding that some records were also found missing.

The team took the seized records to New Delhi for further investigation, they said. As many as 33,188 gun licences were issued by the state authorities during past three years in Jammu and Kashmir, the sources said adding that 26,803 gun licences were issued from different DC offices in six districts of Jammu division, 2,275 from Kashmir division, 104 from Ladakh region and 4,016 by the Jammu and Kashmir Home Department.

Nearly 300 of these licences have fallen into the hands of gangsters, terrorists and criminals in UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, sources said.

Surprisingly, 4,937 fake gun licences have also been issued to non-residents of Jammu and Kashmir, including some gangsters in league with five city gun dealers and officials, including three Additional Deputy Commissioners and an SDM, against whom an investigation by the CBI is on, they added. PTI