The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths on Tuesday carried out searches at 40 locations in Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi in connection with a fake gun licence racket.

In addition, the central agency searched the Srinagar residence of retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Baseer Ahmad Khan, who served as an adviser to Jammu and Kashmir’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha.

The Jammu and Kashmir government had recently removed Khan from the advisor’s post as a result of a communication from the CBI that stated he was among those accused in the fake gun licence racket.

Khan is a resident of the Baghat area of Barzulla in Srinagar. In March 2020, Khan was appointed advisor to the then Lt Governor Murmu and continued to hold that post under his successor Sinha.  

Raids were also carried out at the premises of other bureaucrats or administrators.

‘India’s biggest arms licence scam’

A weapon licensing racket was first brought to light by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Rajasthan Police in 2017 when they nabbed criminals with licenced weapons issued by Jammu and Kashmir bureaucrats.

Furthermore, the ATS found that over 3,000 licences were issued in the name of Army personnel based on false documents.

As per the CBI, 20 district magistrates in Jammu and Kashmir had “fraudulently and illegally issued bulk arms licences in lieu of monetary consideration” in collusion with arms dealers. In what is thought to be India’s largest arms licence scam, district magistrates are said to have issued 2.78 lakh illegal gun licences to non-entitled persons for money in 2012-16.

Following the imposition of Governor’s Rule in 2018, the then Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra handed over the case to CBI.

In March 2020, the CBI arrested Kumar Rajeev Ranjan, a 2010-batch IAS officer, and former additional district magistrate of Kupwara, Itrat Rafiqui. According to the CBI, the two officers, an IAS and a KAS, fraudulently issued a large number of gun licences from 2013 to 2016.