Chandigarh, August 14: With the decisive war against drugs waged on the directions of Chief Minister Punjab Bhagwant Mann to root out the menace of drugs has completed 13 months, Punjab Police have arrested as many as 18079 drug smugglers including 2643 big fish since July 5, 2022. The Police have registered a total of 13458 first information reports (FIRs) of which 1630 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 1259.66-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 1407.16 kg in just 13 months, he said.
Apart from seizing big-haul of heroin, the IGP said that Police have also recovered 837.42-Kg opium, 951.37-Kg Ganja, 404.45 quintals of poppy husk, and 89 lakhs tablets/capsules/injections/vials of Pharma opioids from across the state. The Police have also recovered Rs 13.29 crores of drug money from the possession of drug smugglers arrested in the span of the last 13 months.
Giving a weekly update, the IGP said that in the last week, the police have made the biggest recovery of heroin of 99.12 kg after arresting 316 drug smugglers/suppliers after registering 231 first information reports (FIRs), including 30 commercial. Apart from recovering heroin, Police teams have also recovered 9.20-Kg opium, 11.40-Kg Ganja, 3.47 quintals of poppy husk, and 36018 tablets/capsules/injections/vials of Pharma opioids besides recovering Rs 3.31 lakh drug money from their possession in the last week.
He said that with 13 more Proclaimed Offenders (POs)/Absconders in NDPS cases arrested in the last week, the total number of arrests reached 1026 since the special drive to arrest POs/absconders was started on July 5, 2022.
Pertinently, Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab Gaurav Yadav had given strict instructions to all the CPs/SSPs to investigate backward and forward linkages minutely in each and every case, especially related to drug recoveries, even if they recover a meagre amount of drugs.
| Gurbani World