Districts, Municipalities, Panchayats with exemplary performance in tackling drug menace to be suitably rewarded: Chief Secretary

SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta remarked that the Districts, Municipalities and Panchayats registering outstanding performance in dealing with narcotics would be suitably rewarded by the UT Administration.

The Chief Secretary made these remarks while chairing the 6th UT Level NCORD meeting attended by ACS, Home; Special DG, CID; Special DG, Crime; Principal Secretary, Forest; Principal Secretary, Education; ADGP, Kashmir/Jammu, Commissioner Secretary, RDD; Divisional Commissioner Kashmir/Jammu; DG Prosecution, Deputy Commissioners, District SPs besides other officers of the concerned departments.

During the meeting, Dr Mehta impressed upon the officers to take all the measures to eradicate the evil in its entirety. He asked them to put a fool proof system in place to convert most of the arrests into convictions. He told them to gradually increase the sanitized areas free from drugs and declare them as ‘Drug Free’ after due assessment.

He directed for framing well thought out guidelines for declaring the Panchayats as ‘Drug Free’ in consultation with different agencies like PRI members, Police, Health, Education, RDD, Revenue and Social Welfare Departments.

He also took note of the pharmacy shops with functional CCTVs and maintenance of registers showing sale of scheduled drugs. He asked for fixing the timeframe to complete the process of having these installed at each chemist shop across the UT.

In order to ensure that the illicit trade of drug trafficking is curbed effectively the Chief Secretary asked the Police and District administration to attach the properties of drug dealers as provided under the relevant rules governing it.

He observed that the wrongdoers needs to be dealt with iron hand to save our youth from becoming prey to their nefarious designs.

He made out that the ‘Nasha Mukht J&K’ is not a mere slogan but a goal to be achieved collectively. He called for practising social boycott against the drug peddlers or those engaged in this trade. He called upon the educational institutions to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity there to local police for investigation so that our Schools/Colleges do not become victims of such immorality.

While speaking in the meeting the ACS Home, RK Goyal advised the police administration to hold capacity building workshops for their officers dealing with PITNDPS Act so that they are sensitized about the nuances of handling such cases in a more professional manner. He said that each Panchayat should be declared ‘Drug free’ only when it is certified by the concerned institutions that there is no drug dealer, cultivator and consumer in the village.

While giving details of the performance registered by the Department in rooting out this menace the Special DGP, Crime, A.K Chaudhary gave out that a total of 1850 cases were registered in 2022 arresting 2756 involved persons and registration of 1410 cases till June this year thereby arresting 2068 persons named in the FIRs.

It was further given out that this year 251.42 Kgs of Charas, 124.47 Kgs of Heroin/Brown Sugar, 92.24 Kgs of Ganja, 3374.69 Kgs of Fuki/Poppy straw, 105588 Caps/Tabs/Injections/Bottles of contraband substances were seized under the NDPS Act up to June, 2023.

Moreover it was revealed that in order to plug any loopholes on part of administration action has been taken against IOs/prosecution in NDPS cases which have been dismissed by the trial courts for any shortcomings /discrepancies during investigation.

A Total of 95 cases from UT have been identified so far out of which 74 have been referred to ADGP Jammu and 21 were referred to ADGP Kashmir for taking action against erring officials.