Going beyond crackdown on peddlers | Counselling for drug users & parents: How Surat police unit freed 165 from addiction in its first year

Six months later, with multiple counselling sessions carried out by the Surat city police, the youngster has been ‘rehabilitated’.

He is among the 165 individuals, who have been sobered in the last one year by the Surat SOG’s Anti-Narcotics Unit, the only such unit run by the police in Gujarat, says Surat Police commissioner Anupamsingh Gahlaut.

In a radical shift from the traditional approach of law enforcement, the Surat SOG anti-narcotics unit not only apprehend drug peddlers and question them about their suppliers, but also actively procures the names of all their customers, who are then contacted for sustained counselling sessions by police officials as well as psychologists– family members of youngsters aged up to 25 years are part of the sessions “by default”.

Not just that, post-counselling work requires families to keep a check on their wards and if necessary, even conduct basic tests for substance abuse — for which, the police have been training families.

This SOG unit, comprising 25 trained police personnel and headed by a Police Inspector, was created for the purpose of counselling and rehabilitation of individual ‘consumers’ of narcotics, in a drive to crack down on drug abuse.

Inaugurated in December last year by then Minister of State for Home Harsh Sanghavi, the unit has come as a “saviour” for families who have been unaware about their children being addicted to drugs.

Speaking to The Indian Express, the 47-year-old Surat businessman said, “When we attended the counselling sessions with the police officials, we could see that they encouraged and helped my son to quit the addiction through professional counsellors as well as police personnel, who explained the long term consequences of drug abuse and how it could devastate his family… My son turned a new leaf and rejoined our family’s manufacturing business. It has been a tough task and we decided to support my son instead of blaming him… We knew somewhere, we missed the signs and made a mistake of not keeping a check on the company he kept…”

The businessman has a word of caution for parents: “We realised our oversight as parents… we gave him freedom but did not check on him when he returned late night or whether he was fine… On some occasions, when we found him a bit agitated, we ignored the signs. Now, we realise that he was actually living in a dilemma; not knowing how to turn back and confide in us. I believe if the Surat police had not come knocking on our doors, we would have lost our son…”

Although the rehabilitation is complete, the family continues to check on their son when he returns late at night.

“The path was not easy… It took about six months for my son to be able to completely withdraw himself from substance abuse. Even now, when he returns late at night, I make sure I check him to be assured that he has not relapsed. The police have taught us ways to carry out the basic check and my son knows that we are doing it for his good,” he says.

Involving families

Police say that several families of youngsters, following the rehabilitation, have also procured narcotics testing kits for home testing to make sure that their wards remain “off the substance” and any relapse is reported to the counselling unit of the SOG.

Surat City Commissioner of Police Anupamsingh Gahlaut told The Indian Express, “When we came up with this initiative as part of the endeavour to eliminate drug abuse from the root, we realised that involving families in cases of youngsters was of extreme importance to ensure they do not fall back after a rehabilitation to other forms of substance abuse… We have counselled the families to support and respond to their children instead of reacting and blaming. That has been the crucial factor in the success of this model. We have been advising parents not to compare their children with others which will cause an inferiority complex that then leads them astray, combined with peer group pressure, workload depression…”

Gahlaut said, “Several families who went through the counselling have also purchased NDPS testing kits… The police officers have also trained them to conduct a basic test without the kit to ascertain if the ward has consumed any substance again. In case of any relapse, they will contact the police… We are doing this exercise with compassion and sensitivity as there is stigma attached to the issue…”

Gahlaut says that the city police decided to move beyond cracking down on drug cartels and peddlers to “break the chain of consumers” when the police faced a question: What about the withdrawal symptoms?

Gahlaut says, “We have booked about 300 cases against cartels, who operate from outside Gujarat and peddlers who are the agents selling the drugs to customers… When we sought suggestions from our partners in the N-Coord meeting (for anti-narcoctics), the common opinion was that a coordinated rehabilitation of individuals, especially youngsters, was the need of the hour. So, we created a separate unit of SOG to only question peddlers to get a list of consumers and then contact them individually and through families to make them clean…”

Drug problem

Earlier this month, Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi had said on the sidelines of a public event at Vadgam that the Gujarat police’s fight was not only against those selling drugs but “to help youth who have fallen into the trap of drugs, to come of it”.

“Police have not only caught drugs from the soil of Gujarat, but from the ports of Bengal, from Maharashtra, and even from the networks operating inside the jails of Punjab. All this has been accomplished by our police and ATS. This fight will continue relentlessly; it will continue involving all communities,” Sanghavi had told reporters, in a purported response to Congress MLA from Vadgam Jignesh Mevani who had flagged the “rampant drug peddling” and warned that policemen “would lose their jobs” for not being able to contain drug peddling and bootlegging.

With 84 psychiatrists empanelled in the initiative along with six rehabilitation centres, a team of 25 police personnel headed by the SOG police inspector collected a database of 450 consumers. Of these, 75 individuals aged between 17 to 25 years and 90 aged between 26 to 55 years have been counselled and “rehabilitated” since December 2024.

SOG Police Inspector Tushar Pandya, who has been personally looking into the counselling of the individuals as the head of the anti-narcotics unit, says that while ganja (marijuana) has been the most common substance for abuse, the use of MD drugs and hybrid ganja is also common among those “who can afford”.

Pandya said, “In the younger age group, the addiction seen was ganja while about 15 persons were also addicted to MD drugs along with ganja. In the older age group, the addiction included ganja and MD drugs. In most cases of youngsters, the reason for turning to drugs has been the company of friends and peer pressure as well as flaunting lifestyle… Among the older group– above 35-40 years– marital discord and financial stress have emerged as major factors during the counselling sessions.”

A success story

Pandya narrates the incident of August 2025 when the railway police rescued a woman while attempting suicide with three children. “The woman was brought to the SOG when she said that her husband’s drug addiction had driven her to contemplate the drastic step… We counselled the husband for several weeks and continue to follow up. Now, the man is de-addicted and the family is living happily,” Pandya says.

Pandya adds that as part of strengthening the force for implementation of the anti-narcotics drive, police personnel as well as other government officials are currently receiving monthly training to be “able to identify drug addicted persons and also be able to deal with them or attend to them”