Varsities with foreign students under scanner

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 19

The police have begun a survey of foreign students in the state as part of its anti-drug crackdown.

Universities, especially in Doaba region, have been asked to provide details of all foreign students who were admitted into universities since their inception and also of those who left the course in between and went ‘missing’ from the campus. Meanwhile, the department has also sought details from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) about those students who had landed in India, but did not report at the university concerned in the state.

Jalandhar Police Commissioner Praveen Sinha said the universities, especially catering to African students in the region, had been asked to cooperate and thus, were providing all necessary support to the police. The police have ordered a crackdown after it arrested more than nine students hailing from Zambia, Uganda and Nigeria in various cases under the NDPS Act in the last two years and had recovered huge amounts of heroine from their possession.

According to a recent intelligence report, nearly 15 to 20 students who took admission to a Phagwara-based university last year, had arrived in India, but have not reported at the university to date. The department has now alerted the intelligence agencies in New Delhi about these ‘missing students’.

“We have received inputs that some international drug syndicates are running drug rackets from various universities here in the region. The members of such syndicates take admission in a university here, study for a year and later quietly leave the course in between to run drug cartels in nearby areas,” said a highly placed official.

The officials further revealed that though international drug cartels were earlier running under a single head with a well organised network of designated people, with the advent of social media, they had changed their modus operandi and were now working in small groups formed in various parts of their operation area. The group working in a particular area is unaware about the other groups located nearby and are too working for the same syndicate, the officials added.

It is only because of this modus operandi that the state police had been unable to track high-profile murder cases like that of RSS leader Brig Jagdish Gagneja to date.