Mumbai police are reviewing and revoking firearms licence issued in the past while it adopts stringent steps before issuing fresh licences to civilians in the city. In the last 15 months, Mumbai police cancelled around 300 licences since January 2013 compared to 15 licences cancelled in 2011.

 

With the Arms and Ammunition Branch of the Mumbai police going computerised, Mumbai police have gone stringent on violations committed by firearms licence holders in Mumbai. Computerised records of every firearm licence holder has facilitated in maintaining an updated record of licence holders and based on the information, the police commissioner Rakesh Maria has been reviewing and profiling the licence holder.

 

Maria based on the profile drawn out and violations like non-renewal of licence, wrong address and failure to fulfill the criteria of facing a threat to one’s life, has been revoking licences. In some cases, licence holders have procured licence from other states and since the police do not apprehend that the licence holder is vulnerable to physical harm, his licence has been cancelled.

 

Some of the security guards manning especially jewelry outlets were traced to have obtained their licence from North-East Indian states and accordingly police revoked their licence too.

 

A senior police official said that the process for issuing a licence in recent years is stringent and less than 5 per cent of applications for fire arms licence are approved by the police commissioner. Around 6 years ago, the then police commissioner D Sivanandan for the first time started personally revoking fire arms licence has he traced that a number of holders did not qualify for a licence or was unconvinced about the need to grant a licence to certain individual.

 

“Sivanadan had put certain curbs on approving licences and did not rely on the reports prepared by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Headquarter-I) who was the nodal officer for processing the application and recommending sanctioning of licence and renewal of licence. Since then his predecessors have not been liberal with issuing fresh licence and have also been stringently reviewing and revoking fire arms licences in the city. Maria, an expert on anti-terrorism and counter-organised crime strategist, since taking over as Mumbai’s police chief, has revoked around 122 firearms licence” claimed the senior police officer.