Hyderabad: Despite the Commissioner’s Task Force conducting drives to crack down on illegal firearm users, only a few people have been caught this year. Arms recoveries usually take place when a robbery is busted. The police is yet to develop a system to track illegal firearm users.
“The conventional ways of crackdown are by tracing the arms holder based on tip offs, and by tracking old offenders who were caught under the Arms Act,” said a senior police official.
“Once the guns are successfully smuggled through check posts on state borders then there is no other way to track the weapons in the city,” admits a police officer.
However, cops say that there are no godowns in the city where large quantities of arms are kept. “Most illegal arms are constantly moving from one hand to another, which make it difficult to trace. Sometimes raids at suspicious places based on tip offs become futile as the arms have already moved,” said another official.
Even after a week, the city police has been unable to track the stolen weapon of a detective inspector whose house was burgled.
