Region is becoming a drug haven
Our Deputy Editor Amar Chandel writes on the spectre of addiction
PUNJAB has been in the grip of paralysing drug addiction for quite some time. To make matters worse, a new dimension has been added to this menace. The ever-increasing haul of heroin shows that the state has become the main transit point for the drug coming from Afghanistan via Pakistan. From Punjab, it finds its way to major cities like Delhi and Mumbai, besides Nepal, and is also smuggled to western countries. Being prohibitively expensive, heroin is hardly used in Punjab, where opium, poppy husk and smack rule the roost.
If only 10 kg of heroin was seized in 2004 and 20 kg in 2005, the figure was as high as 128 kg in 2007. Amritsar district topped the list with 51 kg heroin, while Ludhiana yielded 46 kg. This year, the total seizures are set to be much higher. On the one hand, this is the sign of the good work being done by the enforcement agencies. On the other, it also shows a big jump in the smuggling activities.
A consignment of a staggering 54 kg of heroin seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in Amritsar on September 3 shows the magnitude of the problem. This was one of the biggest drug seizures in the state in decades, with a value of Rs 270 crore in international market. Recently, the DRI had nabbed an Akali leader with 23 kg of heroin in Amritsar.
Things have degenerated to such an extent that heroin has been smuggled out concealed in packets of CDs and DVDs of Gurbani being sent abroad. A son of one of the owners of M/s Chhattar Singh-Jeewan Singh, a 133-year-old publishing house of Amritsar, was arrested on September 11 on the charge of sending heroin to Canada through a private courier. About 5 kg of heroin concealed in three packets of devotional material was seized by the DRI near Phagwara. Many publishing houses have been sending devotional material to foreign countries, especially Canada, the US and the UK.
The BSF has also achieved several successes but the quantity seized by it is far less.
Amritsar airport has become the preferred route for smugglers, particularly because sufficient number of sniffer dogs and adequate equipment like ion scanner are not available there.
An unholy alliance between a few corrupt politicians, policemen and drug mafia has made sure that only a small portion of this hydra-headed monster is exposed. Experts aver that the recoveries that are made are not even 5 per cent of the actual volume of drugs floating around.
Workers from both the Congress and the Akali Dal have been arrested with banned drugs. One interesting and helpful sign is that once they are caught parties try to dissociate themselves from them, instead of backing them. That is what happened in the case of Parshottam Lal Sondhi, general secretary of the Youth Akali Dal, Jalandhar wing, when he was arrested with 23 kg of heroin near the Amritsar airport. The Akali Dal initially even refused to admit that he belonged to the party.
Whatever the public posture might be, such a huge racket is thriving mainly because of the patronage of political bigwigs.
Debt-ridden Punjabi youth are being drawn to work as couriers. With each courier getting up to Rs 10,000 per packet of heroin smuggled, there are any number of people willing to risk their lives. A number of women belonging to poor families are also being used as couriers
Most of the drugs come through the Indo-Pakistan border. The BSF is spread thin to face the challenge of the determined smugglers who find innovative ways to send in the drugs. They insert plastic pipes of large diameters into the electrified fences to push contraband to the Indian side. Earlier they used to throw the drug packets over the fence but it was later discontinued as BSF jawans were able to catch them often. On most occasions, smugglers are actively supported by Pakistan’s ISI.
Many residents of remote border villages near the fence are engaged in this illegal trade. Politicians have to do a tight-rope walk. Some farmers raise a hue and cry that they should be allowed to go across the fence to their fields as early as 5 am and return late in the evening. They have a point because agricultural operations cannot be completed during day time. But the longer hours become a nightmare for security agencies. It is well nigh impossible to detect one or two packets of drugs concealed properly in a loaded trolley.
There are a large number of agencies engaged in keeping a check on smuggling like the BSF, Customs, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the Narcotics Control Bureau. But adequate coordination among them is lacking. Instead of operating in tandem, they at times work at cross-purposes due to petty rivalries, with the result that smugglers slip out. If only they can share intelligence properly, the menace can be better controlled. When a particular company of the BSF stays at one place for too long, corruption level tends to rise.
Afghanistan today supplies nearly 92 per cent of the world’s heroin. The recent spurt in Punjab has been caused by bumper opium crop in the Helmand region. Most of the poppy cultivation is in southern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border. With traditional routes of supply of drugs to the West having been blocked under American and NATO control, bulk of the drugs are travelling towards Pakistan and from there to India.
The more serious aspect is that the money generated by drug smuggling is used for promoting terrorism. The ISI supporting the insurgents gives them consignments of drugs along with weapons. So, the drug money is also an indicator of the extremist threat that is spreading under the surface.
Security agencies insist that the only way to deter the smugglers is to make laws even more stringent. They point out that smugglers do not dare to go towards Thailand and certain Arabian countries, because they know that the recovery of drugs can lead to death penalty. But they completely forget that in Punjab it has been routine for certain policemen to haul an inconvenient person over the coals by falsely showing recovery of drugs from him. In the hands of such cops, a stringent law becomes a counter-productive tool.
The whole thing boils down to keeping the men who control the levers of power above board. When they join the law-breakers, there is hardly any chance of defeating the drug menace. What is more important is certainty of punishment than its severity.
To know what the demon of drug addiction can do to a person, family and society, one has to only visit Maqboolpura, an urban slum of Amritsar. It is inhabited mainly by dalit workers, comprising the poorest of the lot. What they have in common besides the poverty is rampant drug abuse.
There have been more than 195 deaths in the past nine years, and the widows of Maqboolpura have none to look up to except some good Samaritans and NGOs.
They are lucky to have even that safety net. There are many other villages in Punjab and Haryana where the problem is as acute and yet there is no help whatsoever coming forth. About 70 per cent of the population of Haryana’s Sirsa district bordering Punjab and Rajasthan is addicted to drugs in early teens (14 years). Such early addiction is the greatest cause of worry.
Besides the highest per capita consumption of alcohol, Punjab is also high on smack, ganja, cocaine, poppy husk, painkillers, cough suppressants and sedative injections. The use of cocaine is particularly on the rise in big cities. Youths in the age group 18 to 30 are the biggest consumers of drugs in the state. According to a detailed survey by the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC), Chandigarh, every third boy and tenth girl student in the state has had drugs.
Drug peddling is not confined to inhabitants of slums. Many middle-class pushers are in business – postgraduate students, ex-servicemen, politicians and even policemen. Only last month, the Mohali police recovered 1.23 kg of cocaine worth Rs 1.25 crore from Dara Singh, an ex-serviceman, who told the police that he got it from a Haryana Deputy Superintendent of Police Gurdarshan Singh Sodhi, who further named a Head Constable and a Constable of the Rajasthan Armed Police as sources for the contraband.
In July, the Narcotics Control Bureau caught Harpal Singh alias Raju, a postgraduate student, with 3.5 kg of heroin and a kilogram of smack. During investigation, it was found that a Sub-Inspector and four head constables of the Chandigarh Police were involved in the peddling of drugs and used to transport consignments out of Chandigarh. They also took bribes from peddlers on a monthly basis to let them carry on their “business”. On the long list of Harpal’s customers were at least 60 police officers and bureaucrats and their kin.
Addiction is also rampant among policemen. In Tarn Taran, 178 policemen were found to have contracted Hepatitis B and C and HIV virus due to unclean syringes and unsafe sex practices. As many as 20 policemen from Mohali district enrolled themselves at the Indian Red Cross society’s drug de-addiction centre in Khanpur this year. Last year, 25 of them attended the month-long course.
While heroin comes from abroad, a lot of opium finds its way into Punjab from the neighbouring Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and also from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. India is one of the few countries which permit cultivation of opium for essential research in pharmacy.
Farmers have been growing opium for years in Chittorgarh, Kota and Jhalawad areas of Rajasthan as per the quota fixed by the government. These enter Haryana and Punjab with the blessings of mafia, politicians, excise department officials, opium growers and contractors of Rajasthan. Only a few politicians can honestly claim that they have not distributed opium or bhukki or other such intoxicants to garner votes. Indulging in smuggling on a large scale is considered the next logical step.
If the politicians use the drugs to buy votes, these are also routinely given by landlords to labourers working on their farms. These landless migrants from other states are either stuck here because of the addiction or carry the menace back to their states.
While poppy husk is poor man’s poison at about Rs 1500 to 2500 per kg, 1 kg of opium may cost upwards of Rs 35,000. For a kg of smack, they shell out as much as Rs 4 lakh. Once the youth are hooked they will do anything – theft, robbery or murder — to get their daily fix.
Then they also take other sedatives and painkiller tablets. There are some who are so badly affected that they take hundreds of tablets per day. Many others take inhalants like white ink, petrol fumes and Iodex.
According to a survey by the Ministry of Social Welfare and the UN International Drugs Control Programme, at 3.4 per cent, consumption of opiads in the region (Punjab-Haryana-Chandigarh) is three times the national average. Opiads include opium, smack and heroin.
While the figure for alcohol consumption is 26 per cent at the national level, it is as high as 49.8 per cent in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. It will not be an exaggeration to say that a whole generation is withering away due to this level of addiction. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 is pretty comprehensive but even that has not been able to deter the rampant usage of drugs.
There is an alarming shift from smoking or chasing to intravenous drug use (IDU). This shift brings with it a potential risk of HIV. Seven to 14 per cent of all HIV/AIDS is transmitted through IDU. Over one-tenth of 20,000 intravenous drug users in Punjab are HIV+.
Leave alone fighting and winning the war against drugs, the police is not even able to stop their entry into prisons. It is common knowledge that drugs are freely used behind bars. Apparently, all this cannot happen without the help of the security staff itself. Some of them have virtually become drug dealers. In fact, most of the riots in jails are triggered by the authorities’ attempts to curb the supply.
The police was given unbridled powers during terrorism days. The residual power is still considerable and is grossly misused to conduct such activities. The government’s first attempt should be to set its own house in order and at least ensure that its own men do not contribute to the mess. But then, some use their official position only as a front to carry on their lethal business.
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