Arms licence racket busted, three held with fake papers from Nagaland

UDAIPUR: 11 WEAPONS AND A LIST CONTAINING NAMES OF 500 PEOPLE, WHO OBTAINED FORGED ARMS LICENCES WERE SEIZED

Three people have been arrested in the state for procuring arms licences from Nagaland with forged documents, Udaipur police said on Sunday. With the arrests, city police claimed to have busted an inter-state arms licence racket.

Eleven weapons, 110 bullets, 11 licences and a list containing names of 500 people, who obtained forged arms licences from Nagaland, were seized from their possession, additional SP (City) Sudhir Joshi told HT.

Joshi said the arrests were made following a probe he ordered after getting information about the racket that was providing forged arms licences to people and was charging huge amount of money in return.

During initial investigation, it was found that the licences were obtained by the people in Rajasthan from Dimapur and Zunheboto districts of Nagaland.

During the investigation, the name of one Vijay Choubisa emerged. Choubisa was detained from Chitrakut Nagar with a pistol on October 20.

Grilled by police, Choubisa revealed that he got the pistol and its licence for ₹3 lakh from Nagaland through one Dharmaveer Singh. Besides, he also told police that Dharamveer had provided arms licences to several other people in return of huge amount of money. Choubisa was arrested on October 22.

Based on the information given by Choubisa, the investigating team arrested Dharmaveer on October 22 from Jaipur and brought him to Udaipur.

Dharmaveer confessed to the crime and disclosed that he got the licences and weapons from Nagaland through Bhanwar Lal Ojha, who hails from Bikaner and is staying in Nagaland’s Dimapur district. A police team led by Chandmal Sangaria reached Dimapur and arrested Ojha. During his interrogation, Ojha told police that he was staying at Nagaland since 1977 and had worked as a civil contractor at Dimapur in 2014.

During his stay in Dimapur, he used to visit the Dimapur Collectorate and there he came in touch with some employees at the Collectorate.

With their help, he started making forged residential proofs and identity proofs of the people from Rajasthan to get them arms licences, said additional SP Joshi.

When contacted by Rajasthan police, the Dimapur administration denied issuing any arms licenses to people in Udaipur.