18 Tainted MPs Get Guns at Subsidized Prices

Bangalore: The Members of Parliament (MPs) in India do get access to weapons easily without any glitch. In a data provided by the government to Right To Information (RTI) activists Ambarish Pandey shows that 82 MPs purchased guns seized by the customs department of which 18 have serious cases pending against them, reports Hindustan Times.

Among the 82 MPs who got guns at subsidized price, twenty-seven of them are from Uttar Pradesh. The guns were sold to politicians like Atiq Ahmad who had 44 criminal cases pending against him. He was a mafia before he turned in to a politician. Ahmad got the Ruger Rifle M-77 for hunting purpose and not for self defence.

Similar allotments have been made to Abu Azim Azmi and Rakesh Sachan both of whom have seven criminal cases pending against them. Government policies in 1990 said that Non-Prohibited Weapons could be given to the government officials on lease on the condition that the weapons should be returned after their retirement.

The policy was later revised in July 2002 stating that the allotment of weapons would be given to those MPs who do not own or possess any weapons at the time of filling their applications and also the weapons would be sold to those MPs on a first come first served basis.

The RTI revealed that between 1987-2012, a total of 756 guns were sold to MPs and VIPs, which included Uma Bharti, Mayawati, Sibu Soren and many other high profile VIPs. Some of these MPs had high profile security provided by the government.

Even though some of the MPs have police protection, yet guns are sold to these MPs. Even guns are sold to MPs who have criminal cases pending against them. The government should be able to track the possession of these weapons after some years because the prices of these weapons are very high in the black market.

India’s democracy is already facing a serious challenge from the criminals of politics, where some of them face serious charges like murder and abduction, and now it is learned that the government has freely sold guns to these politicians.

The above is from the mails I receive from Rediffmail. This is exactly the things against which Anna is agitating against.