Police-public participation at its best

Rajiv Mahajan

Members of Adarsh Youth Club, Kandwal gram panchayat in Nurpur, have pledged to end the menace of drug trafficking in their area, bordering Punjab. 

Led by club president Ashwani Sapiya, these youngsters have become a role model for others, as they have virtually taken the responsibility of making their area free from drugs. They have teamed up with the police to eradicate the menace of drugs from the panchayat. 

This club in not only keeping a track on peddlers in the area, but is also catching them red-handed and handing them over to the police. This public-police participation has become successful and is also aiding cops in its anti-drug campaign. Intriguingly, the police registered 119 cases under the NDPS Act in 2018 (January to December 2018) in Nurpur and Indora police stations, but even then, the cross-border flow of drugs seems to be unabated in border areas of Nurpur sub-division. 

The club members recently caught three peddlers indentified as Deepak and Shamsher of Kandwal and Gurpreet Singh of Gurdaspur in a suspicious condition and handed them over to the police. The police recovered 28-gram heroin (chitta) from them. Before this, the club members forced the two drug addicts to give up drugs in the presence of the cops. 

Similarly, the vigilant members assisted the police in nabbing a woman drug peddler active in Bhadroya village. She allegedly had been selling chitta (heroin) to youngsters in Kandwal gram panchayat and was absconding since January 25. The club, with a mission to make Kandwal drug-free, is active for the last one month and is keeping a track on drug peddlers as well as drug addicts. Ashwani Sapiya said the club, with over 50 members, initially launched its campaign against drug peddlers without any fruitful results, but now, the members were assisting the police in fulfilling its mission. He said the members had observed that youngsters in the panchayat were gradually falling prey to drugs and becoming addicts, which was a serious concern. He lamented that the parents of these addicts were not supporting the club’s mission to eradicate the menace.