Penal Severity, Procedural Fragility: Recovery without Proof and the Road from Arrest to Acquittal under the Arms Act, 1959

Source abstract

The Arms Act, 1959 regulates firearms through licensing, but its practical force depends on Chapter IV (Powers and Procedure) and Chapter V (Offences and Penalties). The Arms (Amendment) Act, 2019 made Chapter V markedly harsher: it raised minimum sentences, created offences for organised crime syndicates, illicit trafficking and celebratory gunfire, and reduced the number of licensed firearms per person. Yet in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, bail is routinely granted and convictions are frequently set aside. This paper examines why. It first sets out the statutory architecture of sections 19 to 33 and the 2019 recalibration. It then distils the foundational rules laid down by the Supreme Court on conscious possession, proof that an article is a functional firearm, sealing and chain of custody, custodial disclosures, sentencing discretion, bail and compromise. Against this base, it analyses judgments of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on regular and anticipatory bail, appeals, revisions and quashing petitions decided between 2017 and 2026, together with Supreme Court reversals of that Court's decisions. The analysis shows that outcomes turn on a small set of recurring investigative failures: the absence of independent witnesses, unsealed or inadequately documented case property, incomplete armourer reports, delay in forensic examination, undocumented links between ballistic reports and individual accused, and reliance on custodial disclosures. It also identifies structural gaps in licensing, revocation, sanction and penal calibration, and documents the practices through which the law is evaded, including carriage beyond territorial limits, celebratory firing, social-media display, irregular licensing and compromise. The paper concludes that the Act suffers from penal severity paired with procedural fragility, and recommends audio-video recording of recoveries, time-bound forensic examination, statutory interim suspension of licences, published licensing criteria and greater judicial consistency.