The formation of a committee comprising members of district administration, police, police intelligence, home and interior department has been recommended for regularly checking arms shops and their records.
In this regard a high level meeting was held which was chaired by Commissioner Peshawar Division, Riaz Khan Mehsud. He ordered action against those involved in the illegal arms trade.
Mehsud maintained that no one would be allowed to sell or purchase prohibited arms and ammunition.
The meeting expressed annoyance over increasing incidents of target killings of security personnel and open trade of illegal and prohibited-bore arms in the former FATA.
Deputy Commissioner, Khyber Shah Fahad briefed the meeting about monitoring and of the arms shops in the district.
He said that a total of 390 shops of arms located in the district Khyber were thoroughly checked and huge cache of illegal and prohibited-bore arms were recovered.
The committee would perform evaluation of arms by managing details of registered dealers and would ensure availability of stock registers and selling of arms.
All the arms dealers would submit their monthly stock report to the committee and would abide by the rules and regulations. The commissioner said those found guilty of selling illegal or prohibited arms would be dealt with iron hands.
The meeting besides other was attended by Deputy Commissioner Peshawar, Shafiullah Khan, Deputy Commissioner Khyber, Shah Fahad, SP Security Peshawar, Salahuddin, District Police Officer Khyber, Imran Khan, District Officer Frontier Constabulary Khurram Ashraf, SHC Commander, Mansoor Sharif, Deputy Director Intelligence Bureau, Farooq Raza and Haider Abbass of WC-104 Wing.
It may be recalled that arms dealer on Tuesday staged a protest demonstration against the sealing of all arms shops in Wazir Dhand area of Jamrud, Khyber tribal district of K-P.
They demanded of the government to allow the sale and purchase of legal arms because the closure of the market would leave thousands of people jobless.
A night ago Frontier Corps and police sealed all the arms shops in the area. The decision was taken after deadly attacks at police and security forces across the province.
Talking to The Express Tribune the president of Arms Dealers Association Haji Muhammad Saeed Afridi said that a an initial round of negotiation has been held between arms dealers, district administration, district police officer and security forces in which it was decided that all the shops would be searched and heavy arms and ammunition of prohibited bore (which can not be kept on license) will be seized by the authorities.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 2nd, 2022.
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