‘Heroin availability on streets down due to crackdown; smugglers shifting to synthetic drugs’: Punjab DGP

Going by the sheer volume of drugs seized and number of arrests made, it seems there is no let up in drugs trade year after year. How do you read that?

We have made a lot of progress. The street availability of drugs has come down drastically. If you see in the past three-four months there has been hardly any death due to drug overdose. No drugs are grown in Punjab but being a transit state, (Punjab shares border with Pakistan and other states) drugs are pumped into the state. Drugs come in from Pakistan through drones or via riverine routes. Drugs such as opium, poppy husk is also coming in from Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. In fact we have recovered lot of opium from Jharkhand and it has emerged as a source for the drug. Ganja comes from Himachal Pradesh. Heroin from here which is smuggled in from across the international border goes to Delhi and from there it is again re-packaged and sent back to Punjab. All these drugs come into the state and if you see our seizures and the number of arrests, its huge considering the size of Punjab. Every year we register around 12,000 FIRs under the NDPS Act and arrest around 13,000 to 14,000 accused while in the entire country there are 16,000 FIRs. So if you see the herculean efforts being made by Punjab, which is just 2 per cent of the size of India, it is a massive enforcement act.

So the bulk of drugs are still coming from Pakistan?

Yes. This year we have also noticed a new trend. The Taliban in Afghanistan appear to have cracked down on opium production in the country. So there has been a fall in cultivation of poppy and production of opium there. In the recent seizures we have seen that smugglers are shifting to synthetic drugs like methamphetamine. Now these are coming in through drones in large numbers.

Going by the data of seizures, an abnormally high number of pills are being recovered in the state.

This is good detection. What is happening is that when we crackdown on heroin and the heroin availability decreases in the market, the consumer shifts to pharmaceutical drugs like ‘Signature capsule’. It was not banned anywhere. The SSPs are taking it up under relevant legal provisions with the Deputy Commissioners to seize these drugs. The diversion of these drugs for misuse is now being prevented. So we are conducting joint raids with other preventive agencies on pharmaceutical stores. Another thing which has worked is the forward and backward linkages. When you make a seizure we just don’t rest with the arrest of a person from whom it has been recovered but find out where it came from and where it was to be sent.

There is a common perception that drugs cannot be sold in village and streets if the local police is not involved. How do you respond to this accusation?

We have zero tolerance for policemen who are conniving with drugs traders. We have arrested our police people when they are found involved and some have also dismissed them from service. There is a rotation policy of the government where we rotate our personnel after a fixed number of years, as is common in other civil departments too. The purpose is that no one should be able to develop a vested interest of linkages of any kind.

When the police talk about ‘big fish’ who have been arrested for drugs trade, what do they mean? What is the profile of a ‘big fish’?

Most of these ‘big fish’ I am talking about are the really, really big ones, with 300 kg, 500 kg heroin seizures. We classify ‘big fish’ with seizures of two kg heroin and above. There are many people who are middlemen who push drugs to retailers. They come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them are hardcore criminals also. Most of the ‘pushers’ are addicts-turned-suppliers.

Is it worthwhile to arrest small peddlers with miniscule quantities recovered? We have seen NDPS FIRs which mention seizure of only silver foil and matchsticks.

We are rather encouraging action in such cases under Section 64A of the NDPS Act. Our entire policy now, as against previous policies when jails were filled with small time peddlers, is that we do not want to arrest someone unnecessarily. Our basic principle is that we do not have to arrest the consumer. But the peddler has to be arrested and for minor seizures, under Section 64 A, there is legal provision that the charges are waived off if he volunteers to undergo de-addiction programme.

There has been lot of focus lately on Village Defence Committees (VDCs). What is their role?

These committees have been constituted with the orders of the respective DCs. And we work in perfect coordination with the civil counterparts. Generally the VDCs comprise 10 to 15 people, depending upon the size of the village. These are people from all walks of life and the nature of these committees is non-political and awareness is created against drugs trade in the area. There is a preference for ex-servicemen for being included in such committees.

Are you satisfied with the progress in the fight against drugs? What is the way ahead?

We are quite satisfied. The property forfeiture of smugglers has been a pathbreaking initiative with seizures worth Rs 284 crore cleared by the government. Smugglers cannot do any business dealing with their properties. It was a policy decision taken by the state government. The CM held a high-level review meeting and directed some measures and said this could be an effective way of dealing with the problem. We have also focused on technological upgradation in a big way. A slew of new measures is being taken so that the fight against drugs gets more teeth. At the ground level we are getting a feedback that there has been a definite decline in the drug trade and availability of drugs on the streets.