Chandigarh: With the decisive war against drugs waged on the directions of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to root out the menace of drugs is almost completing one year, Punjab Police have arrested as many as 14952 drug smugglers including 2132 big fish since July 5, 2022. The police have registered a total of 11147 first information reports (FIRs) of which 1313 are related to commercial quantity.
Inspector General of Police (IGP), Headquarters, Sukhchain Singh Gill, who was addressing a press conference here on Monday, said that the police teams have recovered 987.75-kg heroin from across the state after carrying out cordon and search operations in drug-affected areas besides laying nakas at vulnerable routes across the state. Additionally, 147.5-Kg heroin was recovered by the teams of Punjab Police from Seaports of Gujarat and Maharashtra, taking the total effective recovery of heroin to 1135.25-kg in just 11 months, he said.
Apart from seizing big-haul of heroin, the IGP said that police have also recovered 731-kg opium, 840.76-kg ganja, 350.40 quintals of poppy husk, and 62.49 lakhs tablets, capsules, injections and vials of pharma opioids from across the state. The police have also recovered Rs 11.83 crore of drug money from the possession of drug smugglers arrested in these 11 months.
Pertinently, Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab, Gaurav Yadav had given strict instructions to all the CPs and SSPs to investigate backward and forward linkages minutely in each and every case, especially related to drug recoveries, even if they recover a meager amount of drugs.
Meanwhile, on the direction of Chief Minister Mann to make Punjab a drug-free state, extensive anti-drug drives have been launched by the Punjab Police to combat the menace of drugs from the border state. The DGP has also strictly ordered all CPs and SSPs to identify all hotspots where drugs are prevalent and all top drug smugglers in their jurisdictions. He also directed the police chiefs to effectively forfeit the property of all the arrested drug smugglers so that their ill-gotten money could be recovered. /BI/
