Amid the ongoing drive against drugs, the Punjab Police have arrested 327 drug smugglers after registering 230 first information reports (FIRs), including 31 commercial, under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) act across the state in the last one week.
Police have arrested 43 proclaimed offenders in the NDPS Act cases last week, Inspector General of Police (IGP), Headquarters, Sukhchain Singh Gill said while addressing his weekly press conference on Tuesday. He said the police have also recovered 11.73 kilogram (kg) heroin, 20 kg opium, nine kg ganja, 5.76 quintals of poppy husk, and 28 thousand tablets, capsules, injections and vials of pharma opioids besides recovering Rs 20.07 lakh drug money after carrying out cordon and search operations in drug-affected areas.
On new trends in drug smuggling, the IGP said that drug peddlers are now adopting new ways to evade arrests by selling drugs in very little quantities — in milligrams and grams so that it 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.
Gill said that it was also observed recently that the supply from Abohar and Ferozepur sides is increasing and drug suppliers now prefer public transport to smuggle drugs, to avoid checking. The IGP said that intoxicant tablets are majorly being supplied from Uttar Pradesh-Delhi side from areas of Saharanpur, Ghaziabad, Bahadurgarh via Haryana, while opium and poppy husk are mostly coming from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan side.
Gill said that even since Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann-led Punjab government came to power, the Punjab Police teams have successfully busted 67 criminal modules and arrested 301 gangsters besides neutralising two dreaded gangsters in the encounter and recovered 640 weapons along with 174 magazines and 3364 cartridges from their possession.