Punjab police caught 327 drug smugglers in the past week
Darpan News Desk IANS, 23 Aug, 2022 10:55 AM
Chandigarh, Aug 23 (IANS) The Punjab police on Tuesday said it arrested 327 drug smugglers or suppliers after registering 230 first information reports (FIRs) under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act in the state in the last one week.
The police arrested 43 proclaimed offenders and absconders in NDPS Act cases during this period.
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sukhchain Singh Gill, while addressing his weekly press conference here, said they have recovered 11.73 kg heroin, 20 kg opium, 9 kg ganja, 5.76 quintals of poppy husk, and 28,000 tablets of Pharma opioids, besides recovering Rs 20 lakh drug money after carrying out cordon and search operations in drug-affected areas.
Talking about new trends in drug smuggling, he said the police have tightened the noose around the drug smugglers. Now the drug peddlers and suppliers are adopting new ways to evade arrest by selling drugs in little quantities, in milligrams and grams so that they could not be detected.
"One latest trend has come to fore wherein drug smugglers smuggled drugs by concealing them in onion-loaded trucks to avoid the stink," he added.
Recently, it has also been observed that supply from Abohar and Ferozepur sides is increasing and drug suppliers are now preferring public transport to smuggle drugs, to avoid checking, the IGP said. He added that intoxicant tablets are majorly being supplied from the Uttar Pradesh and Delhi side from Saharanpur, Ghaziabad, Bahadurgarh via Haryana, while opium and poppy husk are mostly coming from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan side.
Gill said the state police have also waged a war against anti-social elements and gangsters.
The police have busted 67 criminal modules and arrested 301 gangsters, besides neutralizing two dreaded gangsters in an encounter and recovered 640 weapons along with 174 magazines and 3,364 cartridges from their possession.
Besides, the police have recovered seven hand grenades and five IEDs, he added.
Anmol Rattan Sidhu resigned from his post earlier in the day. In a resignation letter to Chief Minister Mann, Sidhu said he was resigning from the post owing to personal reasons. He was appointed to the post in March this year.
The DGP said the arrested persons had also tried to kill three associates -- Dagar, Fateh Nagar, and Kaunsal Chaudhary -- of Gangster Sukha Duneke when the police had brought them on production warrant in connection with kabbadi player Sandeep Nangal Ambia murder case.
The officials alleged that the said man instead of showing the licences as demanded, started shouting at the cops and also abused them. As the policemen tried to further persuade the owner, he and his nine staffers started pushing them out of the bar.
The major recovery comes after the Fatehgarh Sahib police had busted a pharmaceutical drug cartel after making a big seizure of over 7 lakh pharma opioids during a raid at an illegal storage godown in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, said Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sukhchain Singh Gill, who was addressing the weekly press meet.
The list of airports not having night landing facility also include airports like Kullu and Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur and Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh, Kalaburagi in Karnataka, Kolhapur and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra and and Ludhiana in Punjab among others.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, IGI Airport, Tanu Sharma said a complaint was received from the IGI Airport Immigration Department that one passenger came to immigration counter seeking departure immigration to Abu Dhabi. During scrutiny of his travel documents, it was found that a Russian business visa affixed on his passport was fake with no security features.
