In Punjab villages, youth take on addicts, peddlers

PK Jaiswar & Gurbaxpuri

Tribune News Service 

Amritsar/Tarn Taran, July 4 

Moved by images of a child hugging his father’s corpse, crying bitterly, residents of Dhotian village in Tarn Taran have declared a war on drugs — help or no help from the police. 

  A video of the grieving child went viral on the social media. Soon after, village youths formed a group and decided to track down drug peddlers in the vicinity and chase them away. They have met with some success. Many NGOs and Sikh organisations, such as Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar Committee, have joined the drug fight. The latter helped nab a 20-year-old girl of Jagatpur village selling heroin after one of its members approached her as a ‘customer’. The incident was videographed, the police called and the girl handed over.

Significantly, more and more locals are coming forward to give information on those in the drug trade. “The response is unprecedented,” says Deputy Commissioner of Police Amrik Singh Pawar. Amritsar (Rural) SSP Parampal Singh agrees.

A revolution of sorts, the panchayats of Himmatpura and Dhelwan villages in Bathinda district have passed resolutions to initiate legal action against those selling drugs as well as to socially boycott them. Sarpanch Malkit Kaur believes that collective social pressure is bound to work.

Dhelwan village head Gurlabh Singh has enlisted the support of the village gurdwara committee too. “We work in tandem to wean away the youth from drugs, keeping a watch on outsiders or any suspicious movement during the night,” he says, adding that with politicians failing to free the state of the menace, “it is time that we, the people, shoulder the responsibility”.