E-Paper
NCB bolsters steps to curb drug menace
New Delhi The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) is set to open a regional office headed by an inspector general (IG)-rank officer in Amritsar in the next two months to crack down on a drug-smuggling racket primarily run from across the border in collusion with Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, according to people familiar with the matter
New Delhi The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) is set to open a regional office headed by an inspector general (IG)-rank officer in Amritsar in the next two months to crack down on a drug-smuggling racket primarily run from across the border in collusion with Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, according to people familiar with the matter.
The office will oversee all anti-narcotic operations across Punjab, the people added.
A similar regional office was opened in Chennai two months ago. The personnel at the Chennai office have the specific task of stopping the smuggling of drugs into India via marine channels, and identifying the big players involved.
Regional NCB offices will also be opened in Guwahati and Ahmedabad in the course of next few months to act against drugs coming through the northeast Frontier and the marine border in the western coast, the people cited above said.
The NCB earlier had three regional offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. The expansion is part of a ministry of home affairs (MHA) decision last year to sett up of regional offices in other places of concern
The opening of regional offices and creating new subzones in specific areas identified by the ministry of home affairs (MHA) and NCB are part of the Centre’s project to strengthen the anti-drugs unit, act against drug cartels, and make India “drug-free by 2047”. Home minister Amit Shah in an interview to HT on May 4 said that the government is working towards the 2047 mission laid out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Probe in different cases have revealed that terror organizations in Pakistan along with ISI are actively pushing drugs through the land and sea border as part of their narco-terrorism project. Home Minister Amit had told Parliament in December 2022 that drug money contributes to funding terrorism, drug traffickers(no matter how big) would not be spared, and they would all be arrested within two years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address during the 90th Interpol General Assembly said that from illegal drugs that destroy lives to sale of illegal arms, the dirty money generated from the crime is also used to fund terrorism.
A senior NCB official said the agency is also coordinating with other sister agencies and the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) to fill 425 newly created posts in the federal agency. Apart from new regional offices, MHA last year approved the creation of these new posts to increase the NCB staff by 38% from the total number of personnel currently working in the agency (1,100).
” Our regional offices will open soon. NCB is in the process of getting new recruits of the newly created posts,” said SN Pradhan, director general of the NCB, said.
“Regional offices headed by IG rank officers will open in Chennai, Guwahati, Amritsar and Ahmedabad. These places will become key to curbing drugs that come in bulk. Punjab has been identified as a problem area for a few years now because Pakistan is actively sending drugs using drones. The problem of drug smuggling and drug abuse has spread across the state,” said another NCB officer aware of the different initiatives taken to add more teeth to the agency.
In the last four months, NCB has also changed some of its subzones after an analysis showed that, for operational needs, it would be better to relocate some offices to different parts of a state from where they currently existed.
“Some subzonal offices, which were created before 2010, have also been shifted after analysis of operational needs. For example, the Ajmer sub zone has been shifted to Jaipur, the Mandsaur sub zone is shifted to Bhopal. This is an overall of the whole agency for better operational needs,” the second officer added.
There have been enough logged incidents to back the need for the regional office in Amritsar.
Last Friday, three drones carrying drugs from Pakistan entered Indian territory in Punjab over a five-hour period, before they were shot down by security forces. The following day, another drone was shot down. BSF officials said that 28 drones have been shot down and retrieved in the first five months of the year, and 200 have been repelled by the forces.
The Guwahati regional office will focus on drug-smuggling through porous land borders in the northeastern states, and officers of the new zonal offices in New Jalpaiguri, Itanagar and Agartala will report to the regional office, the second officer said. Over the last few years, smuggling of drugs, especially Yaba Tablets and Phensedyl cough syrup have increased in the north-eastern states, and in West Bengal.
On Apri 23, the Centre held the first National Conference of Heads of Anti-Narcotics Task Force of States and Union territories. During the conference, home minister Shah said important cases could be given to the NCB for in-depth investigations.
A third NCB official said that the NCB has been actively using the stringent Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PITNDPS) Act to detain big traffickers. A person can be detained for at least two years under this Act. Between 2015-2019, for which data is available, NCB did not detained a single person under this Act. In 2020, it detained 10 people; this which increased to 21 in 2021, and 42 in 2022.
“We have been using the stringent PITNDPS Act to detain people who are big fish in the drug smuggling racket. In the last two years we got over 50 big habitual drug traffickers detained under this law. The focus is on identifying the big fish,” a third officer said.
