Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra is in a fix regarding letters sent by the Rajasthan police’s Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), which is probing arms licences issued to 4.29 lakh people from various districts of the Himalayan state. Previous letters sent by the Rajasthan ATS were greeted by the J&K administration with the excuse that all records had been lost in the 2014 flood.
Recently, Governor Vohra directed all district magistrates of J&K to take urgent steps to furnish all the relevant records regarding the issuance of arms licences last year. They have been told to submit their reports within one month. The Rajasthan ATS officials in the year 2017 camped in Srinagar, but they were not given any information to go ahead with their investigations. Informed sources told this newspaper that many senior J&K officials had tried to hide information as the arms licences scandal was big and many influential people would have come under investigation.
The ATS Rajasthan officials were not even given elementary information regarding many bureaucrats who were serving in the state home department. But the officials worked on their own leads and were able to arrest a senior J&K IAS officer from Gurgaon recently. ATS found that a gun dealer with a vast network had transferred Rs 40 lakh to the account of the arrested person. Apparently, the officials in many militancy-hit districts of Kashmir valley had not maintained any files on the licences issued. Many licences had been apparently issued on the basis of forged documents.