Gun licence application was rejected at first

BROTHERS IN ARMS

Mateen Hafeez and S Ahmed Ali| TNN

Mumbai: Police are probing how Pravin Mahajan, who shot his older brother, BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan, procured a gun licence even after his application for a licence was initially rejected in 1996 by the Thane police commissioner.

Said a police officer, “We are investigating how Pravin procured a gun licence despite his application being rejected at first. We have learnt that he had given no reason for wanting a licence.’’

Police sources said that Pravin had not fulfilled the basic requirements for procuring a gun licence and therefore his application was rejected. However, he approached a top politician in the Sena-BJP, who is related to him, who reportedly cleared the application, the police sources said.

Pravin had bought the .32 Browning pistol from an arms dealer’s shop at Zaveri Bazaar in south Mumbai. He did not buy the pistol from seized government stock.

He had earlier told investigators that he had bought the pistol for Rs 50,000, but on Monday police verified that the pistol was bought for Rs 1.2 lakh. His Maruti Swift was bought from a showroom in Thane in 2005, but the source of his funds is yet to be established, police said.

The Worli police interrogated Pravin for several hours over why he procured a gun licence from the Thane police. “He told us that there was no threat to his life, but he wanted to keep a weapon and applied for the licence,’’ an IPS officer who is heading the attempt-to-murder investigation told TOI on Monday. Police officers indicated that Pravin might have kept the gun only for “status’’.

An arms licence is issued for target shooting, self protection, bank guardsand so on. Weapons seized by police are also offered to applicants who want to buy one. An arms licence is cancelled for “unauthorised use’’ or if the holder is involved in crime. The police have written to their counterparts in Thane to cancel Pravin’s licence. “Pravin’s pistol was small, with low power. He used jacketed bullets that are mostly used in hunting.

Pravin fired three rounds at his brother at a distance of less than six feet.

The Times of India, April 25, 2006