5 Kashmiri LoC traders among 39 banned

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 11

In a major crackdown on the cross-Line of Control (LoC) drug trade, at least 39 traders from both sides of Kashmir have been banned from carrying out any trading activity.

Officials said the five traders of this side of Kashmir were among the 39 banned traders who were allegedly found involved in drug trafficking across the LoC in north Kashmir’s border town of Uri.

“As communicated by the Trade Facilitation Officer, Chakoti in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), on August 9, trader Anjum Zaman and his 34 firms/companies of the PoK have been banned,” said Custodian, Trade Facilitation Centre (TFC), Salamabad, Sagar D Doifode.

Doifode directed all traders of the TFC, Salamabad that they should “neither send their vehicles for export nor order for import of goods from these 34 traders of the PoK.”

He said the licences of five local traders had also been suspended. The banned Kashmiri traders include Kaloo Traders and Masoodi Traders of south Kashmir’s Pampore town in whose consignment of garments drugs were seized on July 21.

The traders have been banned in the backdrop of the seizure of over 60 kg of narcotics by the Kashmir police on July 21 from a truck of PoK at the TFC, Uri.

The police have arrested driver Syed Yousuf of PoK and registered a case under Section 29 of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The cross-LoC trade, which happened smoothly today, is allowed on only 21 items, including handicrafts, footwear, fruits, vegetables and pulses.

The police had seized 114 brown sugar packets worth Rs 100 crore from a truck at Salamabad on January 17, 2014. Almost a year later on February 7, 2015, the police seized 305 packets of brown sugar from a truck of the PoK.

Due to the lack of full-body truck scanners with both sides of governments, the authorities are mulling to ban complex packaging of items under which narcotic drugs are being pushed to this side of Kashmir.

The LoC trade, which started in October 2008, is considered as one of the important confidence building measures between two warring nuclear-armed neighbours — India and Pakistan. However, it has come under the radar of National Investigation Agency, which is probing terror funding in Kashmir along these routes.