In the past umpteen police operations were conducted to cleanse the society of illegal weapons but in vain. Those operations didn’t yield positive results for a variety of reasons. They were half-hearted and the civil governments under whose stint in office they were conducted lacked the political will to take them to their logical conclusion.
There are two types of weapons. Weapons of prohibited bores and non-prohibitive bores. Time was when only the district magistrate was authorised to issue arms licenses under the Arms Act for only non-prohibitive bore and that too after a thorough inquiry. A fixed monthly quota was issued to every district magistrate. The grant of arms license for prohibitive bore weapon like the kalishinkov or 30 bore pistol was simply out of the question. The war between the Afghan mujahideen and the Soviet forces in Afghanistan brought in its wake , among many other evils, flow of heavy weaponry galore of prohibited bore to this country also. The interior ministry too has been issuing special permits to the people for keeping arms of prohibitive bore on their person.
If we are sincere in our claim that we want to rid our society of of mass killings in various types of clashes in the country we would have to launch a concerted campaign to recover all types of heavy weaponry and deposit it in the government malkhanas. Those who volunteer to surrender them should be paid their market price. If any legislation in the matter is required it needs to be made at once. The point is that use of heavy weapons of prohibitive bore should be the exclusive preserve of the armed forced and para military forces and the police and nobody else’s.
- Latest
- Trending
