Pilibhit: Kheri police registered an FIR late on Friday night against Anil Kumar Shrivastav, the authorised representative of a firm that handled the National Database of Arms Licences (NDAL) portal, for allegedly tampering with official records related to 12 firearm licences and violations of the Arms Rules, 1962. The matter came to light after the superintendent of police (special task force), Dehradun, wrote to the Kheri district magistrate on July 14 seeking a report on the weapons.
Nine of the 12 licence holders were residents of Shahjahanpur district, while the remaining three were from US Nagar district in Uttarakhand, according to the inquiry. In his complaint to the police, current arms clerk Sudhir Soni said he had been working in the post since June 29, 2022. Kotwali Sadar SHO Rakesh Kumar Singh said, “An FIR has been registered under BNS sections 318(4), 319(2), 336(3), 338 and 340(2), pertaining to cheating, cheating by personation, forgery for the purpose of cheating, forgery of valuable security, and using forged documents or electronic records as genuine.
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He said that before his appointment, work related to uploading arms licences on the NDAL portal, generating unique identification numbers (UINs) and renewing licences was handled by Shrivastav. Soni said that under an order issued by the then district magistrate, the operation of the NDAL portal had been outsourced to a Kheri-based firm. The inquiry committee found that the UINs for all 12 suspected licences had been generated in 2018, but “no official permission or order related to them was found in departmental records”, the complaint said.
The district magistrate subsequently constituted a joint inquiry committee to examine the licence records. Under the Arms Rules, a firearm licence can be issued by a district magistrate only to a person domiciled in the district concerned. The firm had deputed Shrivastav as its authorised representative. The complaint alleged that Shrivastav fabricated official records and electronic data to make unauthorised entries and modifications for issuing the firearm licences. Download the TOI App.