It's fun for kids, gun for robbers

By D. Arvind

HYDERABAD, JULY 10. It's fun to see them in the hands of children. But, when the same thing is brandished by a stranger you tend to jump out of your skin.

They are toy pistols. Children growing up, watching their action heroes on television and silver screen, want to emulate them. These impressionable minds hanker to possess snazzy firearms, same as the ones deftly handled by their super heroes.

And walk into any toy store or shopping mall you have mindboggling variety of toy pistols. Water guns, musical rifles and pistols firing plastic pellets are available in different shapes, sizes and colours. Most of them are the close imitations of the real weapons, rather a few are made to such a perfection that the original firearms look fake in front of them.

While film directors find it handy to use these imitation firearms in their movies, there is another segment of people who are more than pleased with these `weapons.' Those indulging in robberies, dacoities and extortions have found an easy alternative to the real guns.

Instead of scouting for firearm dealers and coughing out thousands of rupees for procuring a weapon, they are just walking into toy stores and getting a brand new toy pistol of their choice just for a few hundred rupees. If the local make is not up to the expectations there are imported ones, the looks of which any day would beat the original firearm.

That the criminals are increasingly using toy pistols is evident by the fact that most of the gangs busted by the police are found in possession of at least a couple of these dummy firearms.

"Apart from knives, sticks and iron rods, even toy pistols have made their way into the paraphernalia of the property offenders," confirms the Ranga Reddy Superintendent of Police, Mr. N.V. Surendra Babu.

And in the last couple of months itself over a dozen cases have been reported in the city and its peripheral areas falling under Ranga Reddy district wherein the police along with other weapons seized toy pistols. As recently as on Sunday, the Neredmet police busted two gangs involved in extortion and seized one toy pistol along with two daggers from one of the gangs.

On Saturday, the Task Force (South Zone) team nabbed Khaja Khan of Hafeezbabanagar and seized one toy pistol and two swords from his possession. He had bought them from Bidar.

Similarly, on the night of July 4, when a gang of dacoits was busted by the villagers of Yacharam in Ranga Reddy district, apart from knives and sticks they seized a toy pistol from them. The Task Force personnel along with real firearms also seized a plastic weapon from an extortion gang near Sanjeevaiah Park in April. Further, two dacoits nabbed by the Hayatnagar police in June were also found in the possession of a dummy firearm.

"From a distance, just by looks it is hard to make out a toy pistol from a real one. Appearance-wise these toy pistols even fox the cops, then how can a common man dare to oppose or fight a brigand menacingly brandishing it at him?" asks another senior police official.

"If the brigands armed with knives and sticks are outnumbered by the victims, then the latter can think of overpowering the former. But, in addition to other weapons if robbers are armed with toy pistols, the victims, even if convinced that the firearm is not a real one, will never dare to take any chances. The toy pistols do create such fear psychosis among victims," he explains.

And it's not the property offenders alone, others too are finding these dummy weapons handy to threaten people. During last month a junior college student in Secunderabad took a toy pistol to the college with an intention to threaten another student, with whom he had been having some differences. He was caught by the college authorities and taken to Gopalapuram police station. He was let off with a reprimand.

These are the few cases which have come to light, but many property offences committed with the help of toy pistols might be going unreported, feel the police.

Though the toy pistols are being manufactured for entertainment purpose of children, property offenders are finding them handy for their `business.' And there is no provision to prohibit the sale of these `weapons,' police officials add in a helpless tone.

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Section  : Southern States
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