DSP knocks HC door, seeks probe in banned drug seizure cases

Vavinder Mahajan, Deputy Superintendent of Police, formerly attached with Special Task Force (now Anti-Narcotic Task Force), has approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking probe into around 300 FIRs regarding seizure of habit-forming drugs containing Alprazolam salt, registered with various police stations in Punjab.

This was revealed by his legal counsel and daughter Sansha Mahajan during a press conference here on Friday. She was accompanied by her colleagues, Manjinder Singh Sandhu, Avik Mehra and Harpartap Arora.

She said these FIRs were registered in the year 2023, but ironically, no official bothered to carry out a detailed probe into these cases beyond arresting couriers. Ideally, the police should have probed the backward and forward linkages to ascertain the pilferage of drugs in an illegal manner.

Interestingly, Vavinder Mahajan had earlier approached Punjab Police’s top cops seeking investigations into these cases. However, no action was initiated forcing him to approach the High Court, she said.

It may be mentioned here that in September last year, Mahajan was booked on charges of corruption by the STF. He was accused of taking Rs 45 lakh from a pharmaceutical firm for shielding the owner in a case of seizure of huge quantity of pharmaceutical drugs. He, nevertheless, had termed it as ‘false’ and ‘fabricated’ case in order to pressurise him not to pursue the case. The High Court had given him reprieve in the case and asked the CBI for conducting preliminary probe into this.

Sansha Mahajan said that during his tenure with STF, Vavinder Mahajan had registered a case and seized huge quantity of pharmaceutical drugs worth hundreds of crores apart from raw chemicals from pharmaceutical factories in Himachal Pradesh and some other parts of the country in February last year. The investigations had exposed a well- oiled and influential nexus between the pharma companies and the trafficking rackets. During the probe, he had found that the company had manufactured around 20 crore tablets containing Alprazolam salt that was smuggled into Punjab.

Vavinder Mahajan is currently posted with the 9th battalion of PAP in Amritsar.