Court hauls up senior officer for illegal weapon

A city court has framed charges against a station house officer of a police station for the illegal possession of a country-made pistol, Sumit Saxena reports.

A city court has framed charges against a station house officer of a police station for the illegal possession of a country-made pistol. The CBI had arrested the police officer in a corruption case and raided his house to recover the money in 2004. But instead, he had seized a country-made pistol from a cupboard in his toilet.

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The weapon was not an official one, therefore an offence under the Arms Act is made out, the court observed. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Lokesh Kumar Sharma took into account the forensic report, which established that the weapon seized from accused Virender Kumar Chauhan, then SHO of Kalyan Puri police station, is a firearm as defined under the Arms Act. The CBI told the judge the SHO kept the weapon without any licence and it had been seized in the presence of two independent witnesses.

The judge declined to take a lenient view of the accused and said the court cannot allow the accused to go scot-free at this stage, without giving the prosecution an opportunity to prove the allegations.

The judge said, "talk about the offence committed by a police officer under the discharge of his official duties….. keeping in possession an illegal arm by the accused even while working as a SHO of a particular police station cannot be considered to be an act done by him as an official duty or authority as SHO of the concerned police station."

The accused could not explain why the weapon was in his possession, the judge observed. The counsel for the accused said the police officer had already been acquitted in the corruption case and the CBI had manufactured a false case against his client.