Gun culture? UP firearms in Punjab boys' hands for Rs 2,500

LUDHIANA: Cheaper than the cheapest Jio phone, illegal guns have reached the hands of robbers, carjackers, gangs, score settlers, and the boys who aspire to be tomorrow's mafia dons. On May 30, the Division Number 1 police arrested 18-year-old Rajan Kumar of the city's Lohara area with a Saharanpur-made gun he had bought for Rs 2,500.
A gun licence is now difficult to get but the supply chain of countrymade firearms is hard to break. Ten firings were reported here in May, and in six of those, illegal arms smuggled from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were used. These are not only cheap but also easy to get. A police official said: "A community around Khargon in MP is known for manufacturing high-quality illegal guns. With the help of MP's police chief, we arrested some of its members but the smuggling resumed after a while. Their most expensive gun is for Rs 30,000."
And if you want inferior stuff, you go to UP, said the official. The guns move from hand to hand until these reach the customer. "People now go to UP and MP to get these guns, so we never find the kingpins. When we recover a weapon, the investigation hits a dead end, for the next link in the chain is guarded," he said. Another official said: "We are short of men, money, and fuel for operations in UP and MP."
Police commissioner Kaustubh Sharma said: "We have made licensed arms difficult to get, after serious assessment of threat. We are cancelling the licences where the holders have grown old. We give it to the ex-servicemen, for they handle the arms responsibly."
Three units of the CIA are at work to seize illegal guns. Inspectors working under four ADCPs pursue the leads of all firing incidents. Sharma said: "We recover many illegal weapons but we know there are a lot more."