Security tightened after 23 inmates flee from Mohali's Sector 66 de-addiction centre

As many as 23 inmates, mostly booked in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act cases, of the Sector 66 de-addiction centre fled the facility recently, sounding alarm bells for the Health Department and police officials.

While most of the inmates were facing NDPS Act cases after being found possessing small quantities of narcotics and were housed in a specially made “ward” for reformation, there were also others undergoing voluntarily treatment.

The inmates reportedly fled by breaking open a window, sources said. Senior administration and police officials have since reviewed the security arrangements at the Nasha Mukti Dawai Kendra. All the investigation officers in the cases have been intimated.

Centre-incharge and Deputy Medical Commissioner Dr Parvinder Pal Kaur did not comment on the incident.

Officials, meanwhile, said the rehabilitation process would continue as police have the antecedents of the inmates and some of them have been found. Police officials remained tightlipped over how many have come back.

As a part of its ongoing “Yudh Nasheyan Virudh” campaign, Punjab health minister Dr Balbir Singh along with Rajya Sabha MP Vikramjeet Singh Sahney and Mohali MLA Kulwant Singh had on May 1, upgraded the Sector 66 OOAT centre, now renamed as Nasha Mukti Dawai Kendra, and interacted with the inmates, assuring them of treatment and rehabilitation to go ahead in their life.

The centre, billed as a model centre for Punjab in the near future, offers inmates a 2-3 week de-addiction treatment. Subsequently, the inmates are shifted to the rehabilitation facility within the same complex, where inmates receive skill training in computers, mobile phones, electrical work, and cooking based on their preferences.

Punjab has about 2,500 patients in de-addiction centres with a 5000-bed capacity in 565 such centres in the state.