Weapons Of Choice

New weapons of choice

At the Gulbarga jail in Karnataka on January 3, a country-made version of a prohibited gun, a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, typically associated with the Mumbai underworld, was found in the possession of an undertrial prisoner, Tadakal Ramesh.

The Gulbarga police found the weapon had been sent into the prison as part of a plot in real-estate rivalry between two jailed cousins. Fellow prisoner Yusuf Khadri Bachkana, a Mumbai gangster associated with the Chhota Rajan gang and convicted of a murder in Bangalore, is alleged to have facilitated the supply. A Gulbarga police inspector, Rajkumar Bajantri, was arrested for allegedly involvement in the plan of one of the cousins, Bettanagere Shankar, to kill the other, Bettanagere Srinivas.

In March, after Srinivas was shifted to Mysore jail, prisoner Balaji Rao fired five bullets from a 0.38 semi-automatic pistol at him. Srinivas survived.

On April 15 and April 17, a Bangalore criminal known only as Akram went on a shooting spree with a 9 mm country-made semi-automatic pistol against former business partners. He injured two persons including a local politician. A police “encounter” killed Akram on May 4.

On May 28, the Bangalore police announced the seizure of two unlicensed, country-made 7.65 calibre semi-automatic pistols after the arrest of Mardhan Suleman Khadri, younger brother of Bachkana, and local criminal-turned-politician Ismail Sharif alias Nana. The guns were allegedly supplied to the politician on Bachkana’s orders.

For years, the weapon of choice for the local underworld in Karnataka used to be machetes and choppers. Only in the rare crimes when the Mumbai underworld has been involved would sophisticated hand-held weapons be used. That is now changing. Guns are now become an integral part of crime in Karnataka.

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Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales – Weapons of Choice

“The pen is mightier than the sword”. Ha ha ha! Take that, ya stupid fencers!

But, no. Of course, this is just a Bulwer-Lyttonian adage suggesting that the written word is more powerful than a display of physical force . ‘Fair enough’ you might think if you are of such a mind to think in terms of the borderline fairness of such truisms.

But then you recall that this message  directly contradicts the underlying point of that other well-known doctrine that declares that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me’.

So, which is it, aphorissimos? Which trumps what? Swords? Sticks? Names? Pens? Stones? Sort. It. Out.

And don’t even get me started on the total nontransitivity of rocks, paper and scissors. That way lies madness. In retrospect, I was a fool to even raise the topic, but, heck, who knew ranking the efficacy of ancient weaponry would be so bowel-cussedly difficult?