Notice to actress Soha Ali Khan in arms licence case

Gurgaon, March 21 (IANS) The Gurgaon district administration Friday issued a notice to actress Soha Ali Khan for obtaining an arms licence despite being below the legal age for acquiring a firearms licence.

The administration also launched a probe into her original application file, which is now missing from the official records here.

The notice to the actress, daughter of former cricketer Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and actress Sharmila Tagore, has given her 15 days to send her reply.

District Magistrate Rakesh Kumar Gupta directed additional deputy commissioner Abhay Singh Yadav to conduct the probe into both issues.

Soha Ali Khan has been charged with obtaining the arms licence for her .22 bore rifle Nov 5, 1996 when she had not yet completed 21 years of age - the permissible age for possessing an arms licence.

The passport record of the actress puts her year of birth as 1978, and in 1996 she was just 18 years old.

Her father Pataudi used the same weapon for black buck poaching, for which a case was registered against him June 5, 2005. The .22 bore weapon, confiscated from him at the time, is still in the possession of the Jhajjar police, Rajasthan.

The poaching case is being tried in a wildlife and environment court in Faridabad town, Haryana.

The notice to Soha Ali Khan is mainly on two counts - how did she obtain the arms licence though she was not 21 yet, and how did her father, who was a retainer of the weapon, misused it for illegal hunting.

Soha has also been asked to explain why, while moving a fresh application for renewal of her licence Sept 7, 2005 before the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) Gurgaon, she concealed the fact that the weapon was in the possession of the Jhajjar police.

Gupta said that if Soha Ali Khan did not reply within the stipulated time, it would be presumed that she had nothing to say in this matter and appropriate action would be initiated against her, including cancellation of the arms licence.

Gupta admitted that the Jhajjar police did not inform the Gurgaon administration that her father had illegally misused her weapon in poaching activity.