Thaindian News

New Delhi, April 1 (IANS) The Supreme Court Friday pulled up the defence ministry, asking why it had not plugged the loopholes to prevent the sale of non-service weapons by army personnel to other people and expressed its “shock and surprise” over the way the ministry had dealt with the issue.

“It seems we are heading for another racket,” said an apex court bench of Justice B.Sudarshan Reddy and Justice S.S.Nijjar in the course of hearing of a petition seeking action against all the officials involved in the issuance of licences and sale of these weapons, meant for army personnel’s private use, in open market.

“The defence ministry, it seems, is serious at this point of time but what was happening for all this while before this petition (was moved). Why it did not occur to you to plug (the loopholes earlier),” the court asked.

When advocate Arvind Sharma, who had filed the petition, told the court that most of the army officers get these weapons at cheap rates and sell it at exorbitant prices, the court said: “Forget the prices.”

“The question is,” the court asked, “how the weapons are moving from army men to other persons. What is the plugging you have done. There must be a wholesale ban. It is a very serious matter.”

“We are really shocked and surprised that the issue does not merit that serious attention of the government,” the court said, also expressing its displeasure over an under secretary filing the affidavit on behalf of the defence ministry.

The court said that it was not happy with the affidavit which it described it as “very vague”, and said that the affidavit should be filed by a senior ranking officer.

Responding to the serious view taken by the court, Additional Solicitor General Vivek Tankha sought six weeks time to file a detailed affidavit. He told the court that the ministry has sought report from the army on the review of the procedure for issue of non-service weapons to army personnel.

The court asked the defence ministry to file a comprehensive report on the steps taken by it to deal with the problem after the filing of its last affidavit on March 8. The court has also asked the ministry to file the report of Sep 25, 2008 submitted by an army court of inquiry.

The court asked the Rajasthan’s chief secretary, where actual transaction of sale of these weapons took place, to file a further affidavit and status report as to the state of investigation as against three Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers who had granted eleven licences.

Counsel Manish Singhvi, appearing for the Rajasthan government, that it had investigated 14 cases. FIRs have been filed in six cases, a final report in two cases while the remaining are still under consideration.

Singhvi told the court that the state government has moved against the Rajasthan Administrative Service (RAS) involved in the issue.

The matter will next come up for hearing on April 29.