Representational image. File
| Photo Credit: K.V. Srinivasan
In a major relief to South Indian Movies Dummy Effects Association, the Madras High Court has directed Greater Chennai City Commissioner of Police to issue certificates and identity cards to the association members so that they could transport dummy weapons, for movie shootings, without any hassle.
Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan quashed a December 20, 2024 order passed by the Commissioner of Police A. Arun who had refused to issue certificates for the dummy weapons and also identity cards for the members on the ground that the Arms Act of 1959 does not provide for issuance of such documents.
Disagreeing with the Commissioner, the judge said, the term ‘arms’ had been defined under Section 2(c) the 1959 Act to mean articles of any description designed or adapted as weapons for offences, or defence, and included firearms, sharpedged and other deadly weapons, and parts of, and machinery for manufacturing arms.
The section also made it explicit that the definition of the term would not include the articles designed solely for domestic or agricultural uses such as a lathi or an ordinary walking stick and weapons incapable of being used otherwise than as toys or of being converted into serviceable weapons.
“Thus, it is clear that… dummy weapons are in the category of the weapons incapable of being used otherwise than as toys,” he said and recalled the Bombay High Court to have passed an order in 1999 itself directing the Mumbai police to issue identity cards and movement passes for dummy weapons.
Pursuant to that order, the present petitioner association had filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court in 2021 seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu police to devise a procedure for hassle free transport of dummy weapons by assigning numbers to each one of them and issue necessary certificates.
Then, the association had complained of the police having seized two dummy guns from assistant director Victor when he was transporting them to Karaikudi for the shooting of actor Suriya starrer Etharkkum Thunindavan on August 7, 2021. Subsequently, 150 more guns were seized from a godown in Chennai, it claimed.
Justice R.N. Manjula disposed of that writ petition on November 18, 2022 with a direction to the police to consider the petitioner association’s representation in the light of the Bombay High Court’s order. Subsequently, the Greater Chennai City police began taking proactive steps in favour of the petitioner association.
The association members were asked to assign dummy weapon numbers and carve them on the left top of the guard trigger of the dummy weapons. Thereafter, a Deputy Commissioner of Police and his team inspected 1,827 dummy firearms of the petitioner association between January 5 and January 10, 2024.
After the inspection, when the association approached the police again for issuance of certificates and identity cards, the incumbent Commissioner of Police rejected their request leading to the present writ petition. Justice Ilanthiraiyan allowed the writ petition and quashed the Commissioner’s order.
He also directed the Commissioner to issue certificates and identity cards within 12 weeks.
Published – March 30, 2025 12:01 pm IST
