Audit of arms dealers planned

The police and district administration of the garrison city have decided to come down hard on the shenanigans of arms dealers who use the cover of legal business to sell illegal arms to personal contacts and VIPs.

Rawalpindi Deputy Commissioner (DC) Anwarul Haq and City Police Officer (CPO) Ahsan Younus have taken an important decision to force licenced arms dealers to strictly follow laws and regulations.

In this regard, special teams comprising the Civil Defence Department (CDD), Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), police special branch, and Rawalpindi Police have been formed on the strict instructions of the officials.

These teams are set to launch a joint crackdown and audit the inventory and sales registers of all arms dealers across the district this week. The arms dealers are already, as per condition of their licence, legally bound to submit data of sale and purchase to the home department regularly.

The regulation will strictly control the supply of weapons in Rawalpindi along with the display of arms on social media after increasing incidents of aerial firing.

Currently, there are only 42 licenced arms dealers in the district while the number of illegal arms dealers is around 250.

The illegal arms dealers sell various kinds of prohibited weapons and ammunition to many influential personalities, criminals, and youngsters for a heavy amount of money.

The massive crackdown that is slated to launch this week will include bookings of illegal arms dealers along with confiscation of equipment and registration of cases against them.

Further, the licenced arms dealers will undergo a full audit and cases will registered against them if it was found that they have sold more weapons than approved by the home department.

The shops of arms dealers whose licences have expired will be sealed immediately and the weapons would be seized.

Police officers said that they already have data of all arms licence holders, besides shops acting in quasi-legal manner are under radar of special branch. They said that some unscrupulous elements buy one licenced weapon, than get a dozen others stamped with same number.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2020.