Thane goons get licence to kill in Nagaland

NEW DELHI, SEPT 6: Itching for an all-India arms licence, but do not know how to bypass the mandatory and time-consuming police scrutiny?...

NEW DELHI, SEPT 6: Itching for an all-India arms licence, but do not know how to bypass the mandatory and time-consuming police scrutiny? Go to Nagaland and get it within three days. Fifty four residents of Maharashtra’s Thane district, adjoining Mumbai, many of them involved in serious crimes and with underworld connections, have done it in the recent past.

Madan Bhaiyya, the UP politician with an uneviable police record has done it with equal ease: As the investigators found after seizing his gun.

But the Union Home Ministry has taken a serious view of the matter. The lid was off the racket a few days ago when the Commissioner of Thane Police, B S Mohite, discovered that 54 residents of his area who have nothing to do with Nagaland have got their arms licences registered there.

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And in most of these cases, a particular Additional Commissioner of Dimapur proved “accommodating” enough to issue the licence. So much so that he forgot to verify whether any of them was a permanent Nagaland resident. As itturned out, none was.

A perturbed Mohite shot off a detailed representation to the Cabinet Secretariat, which in turn has intimated the Union Home Ministry.

Points out Mohite to the Cabinet Secretariat: “I am submitting herewith the information in a tabulated form about the arms licences issued by the Additional Deputy Commissioner, Dimapur, and other Addl Deputy Commissioners without proper verification from us. Incidentally, the arms licences issued are valid for All India. We believe that they have no jurisdiction to issue these All India licences.”

North Block observers say the list forwarded by Thane Commissioner is just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to the obliging Nagaland officials, scores of people throughout the country might have benefited, they feel.

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The list of 54 Thane residents, now available with The Indian Express, shows that almost all of them got their arms licences during or after 1997. An inquiry has been ordered by the Thane Police.

The list is peppered withreferences to criminal cases pending against the licence-holders. One of them, Santosh Manzaia Shetty, resident of Bhiwandi, is implicated in nine cases. In September 1996, the report shows, the police was contemplating externment proceedings against Shetty. On April 22, 1999, Maharashtra Police cancelled Shetty’s licence but he moved an appeal, the Cabinet Secretariat is told.

Two other persons, Madanlal Amritalal Gupta and Alamgir Jhinu Shah, were issued licences by Dimapur’s Additional Deputy Commissioner in late 1997. According to Mohite, they have been facing eight criminal cases registered as far back in 1980 (against Shah) and 1990 (against Gupta).