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Amid curfew duty, police continue hitting drug smugglers hard in Tarn Taran
District police have frozen assets of 16 drug smugglers worth ₹8.6 crore in last one month
Besides ensuring strict enforcement of the curfew amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Tarn Taran police are also doing its best to “break the backbone” of the drug smugglers in the district, which is among the worst drug-hit districts of Punjab.
The border district’s police have freezed the assets of 16 drug smugglers, worth ₹8.6 crore, in the last one month. Besides, the police have prepared eight new cases for freezing property worth ₹16 crore belonging to various drug smugglers, including those from Havelian village, which is situated at a stone’s throw distance from India Pakistan border.
The property of the smugglers is being seized on the order of the competent authority (CA) — A statutory authority under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators (Forfeiture of Property) Act, 1976 — and under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.
On Tuesday, the police seized the property of two “major drug smugglers”—Narinder Singh of Chinna Bidhi Chand village and Jagtar Singh of Dall village (both border villages). Jagtar was arrested in 2012 with 21-kg heroin while Narinder was arrested in 2015 with 5-kg heroin. Their agricultural land measuring around 5-acre each, residential houses, a tractor were among the assets seized by the police.
“Though we have been engaged in enforcing curfew and ensuring the delivery of daily meal and ration to the poor people, but we are also considering the drug menace in the district as another big challenge. We don’t want to give any chance to the drug paddlers and breaking their back bone is our prime motive,” said senior superintendent of police (SSP) Dhruv Dahiya.
He said, “In total, till now, we have seized the property of 51 drug smugglers, worth ₹54.46 crore. Our teams are working hard to identify many more cases of the drug smugglers. We are thinking that this is the best way to break the supply chain not only in the border area but also in Punjab.”
Sources said among the new prepared cases, one is of a notorious smuggler belonging to Havelian village. “We have identified the property of the Havelian village’s smuggler in Jalandhar and Mohali, which is worth over ₹4 crore. His name will be disclosed once we get the order to freeze his property from New Delhi,” said another senior police official.
Superintendent of police (SP-headquarters), Jagjit Singh Walia, said, “We are ensuring the seizure of those all drug peddlers who are caught with commercial quantity of heroin.”
Earlier in March, the police had seized around six marriage palaces after finding their owners involvement in drug peddling.
