4 held for selling drugs outside hospital

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 25

The narcotic cell of the police today arrested four persons for selling drugs to addicts outside the Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST) Centre at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital here.

Those arrested have been identified as Kashmir Singh of Verka village, Chintu of Karampura, Varinder Singh and Manpreet Singh of Mustafabad area.

The police seized intoxicants, heroin, charas and several syringes from their possession.

The police said the accused were addicts themselves and used to come to the hospital to take their dose of drugs. They allegedly sold the drugs outside the Swami Vivekanand Deaddiction Centre on the hospital premises.

Station House Officer (SHO) Varinder Mahajan said the matter was under investigation. He said the police were trying to find out whether employees of the deaddiction centre were in league with the addicts.

On June 11, the police had arrested Ajay Kumar and Dalbir Singh outside the OST centre.

The centre, established in 2010, provides medicines such as Buprenorphine to drug addicts under controlled prescription to ultimately wean them off drugs.

Earlier, around 20 addicts were blacklisted by the centre while purchasing medicines from such patients.