Expressindia.com:Monday,January 30, 2012.
Chandigarh: Call it a craze for weapons or just a sense of insecurity. There is an increase in the number of city residents getting their personal weapons registered at various police stations across the city. As per information obtained by Newsline under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the city has seen 1,675 different types of weapons being registered at the 11 police stations in the past 10 years.
The Central Division, with the Sectors 3, 11 and 17 police stations falling under it, has the maximum number of weapons registered. The division takes care of 19 sectors and four villages, many of which are inhabited by the elite of the city. The division has a total of 800 registered weapons, which is almost double the number of weapons registered at the two other divisions.
The Southern Division has a total of 580 weapons registered while the East Division has a total of 295 weapons registered. Each of the above divisions have four police stations falling under them.
The maximum number of weapons has been registered under the Sector 3 police station, which has Sectors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and Kaimbwala village falling under its jurisdiction. The second spot is taken by police station-34 with 227 weapons while the Sector 11 police station has 225 registered weapons.
The two police stations which are at the bottom end when it comes to weapons registered with them fall under the East Division and have mostly villages and colonies falling under their jurisdiction. The Manimajra and Industrial Area police stations have 20 and 31 registered weapons respectively.
Interestingly, Sector 33 alone has 119 people with registered weapons against their name. According to the police, the number of registered weapons does not pose a big problem as they are aware of the credentials of the people possessing weapons in a particular sector or a locality.
Another fact that has come out from the information available is that a large number of weapon-holders are retired or serving in the armed forces. This, the police state, is because of the large number of defence personnel settled in Chandigarh.
As per the data available, single and double barrel guns of different bores are preferred by the majority of people. The number of revolvers and pistols too have seen an increase over the years, apart from foreign-made weapons.
Surprisingly, only four licenses have been cancelled in the past decade due to various reasons. Three arms licenses registered under the Sector 36 police station were canceled in the last 10 decade.
The Sector 26 police canceled the licence of former municipal councilor Davinder Singh Babla as he was absconding in the cases registered against him.
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