The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday raided the government accommodation of former deputy commissioner of Srinagar Shahid Choudhary in connection with an illegal arms licensing case.
Shahid Choudhary is a 2009 batch IAS officer and currently serves as the Administrative Secretary of Tribal Affairs Department of Jammu and Kashmir.
CBI is conducting searches at around 40 locations including at Jammu, Srinagar, Udhampur, Rajouri, Anantnag, Baramullaa, Delhi at the official & residential premises of then public servants(including IAS Officers), around 20 Gun Houses etc in an ongoing investigation of a case related to Arms licence racket.
The searches were in connection with a case registered by CBI in 2019, wherein it had alleged that between 2012 and 2016, the deputy commissioners of various districts of Jammu and Kashmir had fraudulently and illegally issued bulk arms licences to seek monetary consideration.
IAS officer Rajiv Ranjan and Itrit Hussain Rafiqui, both former district magistrates of Kupwara, were arrested in March 2020 by the CBI, which had taken over the probe into the gun licence racket from J&K police in 2018.
According to the police FIR, the deputy commissioners of various Jammu and Kashmir districts, between 2012 and 2016, “fraudulently and illegally issued bulk arms licenses in lieu of monetary consideration”.
The gun licence racket had been unearthed by the Rajasthan Police in 2017-18.
The J&K police found that thousands of licences had been issued by authorities in various districts of Jammu and Kashmir in a fraudulent manner. It also found that many of the people who received the licences had criminal records.
The then Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, N N Vora, handed over the probe to CBI. On July 12, 2018, the Governor revoked individual gun licences issued between January 2017 and February 2018
Visuals from the government quarters showed CBI vehicles entering the premises.
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