Almost every other violent crime reported these days involves the use of firearms. Most of these are ‘country-made’. Minor altercations end up in shooting deaths. This has added a serious dimension to crime control. In a country where there are strict regulations regarding gun ownership and licenses, it is baffling that unlicensed weapons have proliferated to this level. It is almost as though they are being made available at every paan or tea shop. This threatens to acquire pandemic proportions if a directed and comprehensive approach is not adopted to eliminate this problem.
While it is easy for anybody with welding skills to manufacture country made pistols and guns, it is not easy to do in the case of ammunition. Quite obviously, the bullets and cartridges are being made available by mainstream dealers, and probably those in charge of ammunition stocks in the many para-military and police forces. The response to the growing threat has to deal with each such factor separately and appropriately.
Much of the manufacture of country made weapons is done in rural areas of almost all states, away from the public eye. Who these people are is often a well known public secret, otherwise how would they make their sales? The intelligence units of the police cannot be unaware of this and, yet, the industry flourishes. So, quite obviously, if nobody else, the force on the ground is on the take. There are ways to deal with this problem – by putting the right people on the job and undertaking regular inspections of villages and qasbahs with a reputation for such transactions. There are areas under the control of Maoist groups that also require a separate strategy.
The more sophisticated weapons used by professional criminals are mostly being smuggled in from bordering countries. The use of drones on the border with Pakistan is an almost everyday phenomenon, but there are porous borders with Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar in the North-East. Here, too, complicity of elements within the security forces is a strong probability.
The multi-pronged strategy should involve the civil police to disrupt local sales and manufacture, as well as diversion from legitimate sources. The gaps in the intelligence services need to be shored up, be it shortage of personnel or inadequate training. Where the challenge involves national security, the coordination between various agencies needs to be ratcheted up to the required level. Also, the judicial process should ensure that offenders are speedily punished, instead of becoming hardcore criminals as justice continues to be delayed.
