Lords of the drug rings

Rajesh Ramachandran

Balwinder Singh Janjua got it right when he made CAT, the web series spun on Punjab’s narcotics network, because it was primarily about Punjab’s police and politics. The protagonist is a police informer and the other characters who matter in this well-made Netflix series are all policemen and politicians. Bent cops and their crooked bosses make the headiest combination that will never let a society sober up, for drugs funnel in unimaginable wealth in unaccounted cash, which can always buy tickets to positions of power. This simple cop-politico-drug money equation ensures that it is always some ‘Heera’ who smuggles heroin and some ‘Anmol’ who further takes it to a city, where they are caught, hooded and presented as great catches — not to be heard of ever again.

How can an international syndicate of smugglers, drug manufacturers, wholesale sellers and local pushers work within city limits without the cops getting even a whiff of it?

The recent Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) drug bust in Ludhiana was an exception because unlike Heeras and Sheras, the ones caught had proper names, addresses, offices, godowns, vehicles, bank accounts and a network to smuggle in opium, procure acetic anhydride, manufacture heroin and sell it. This was something new for Punjab. According to the NCB, the kingpin was a tea-seller’s son, Akshay Chhabra, who, with the help of two Afghan nationals, was cooking cocktails of drugs to become a crorepati overnight. For a change, there was a real-life character with a tea-vendor father and a working-class family living in one of the poorer localities of the city. In just two years, he bought property and vehicles worth crores of rupees and flaunted a successful wholesale trading business of ghee, edible oil and rice.

NCB regional boss Gyaneshwar Singh has got over 60 bank accounts frozen and is now in pursuit of the drug money going into the running of nightclubs — potential retail outlets. Apparently, the drug trade has been funding such ventures even in the Chandigarh-Mohali-Panchkula tricity. These revelations have been jaw-dropping, for most of the 16 arrested by the NCB have clean records and have been running regular businesses. The only thing wildly irregular about their business was the returns; for instance, Jaspal Singh Goldy, a carpenter who built cavities in vehicles to hide drugs and money, lived it up in a palatial house. It is the double life of seemingly normal businessmen that made this week’s NCB drug bust special, apart from the audacity of running two heroin factories in the middle of Ludhiana’s bustling markets.

But the most curious aspect of these revelations is that the local police did not know what was happening, literally — that opium was coming in from Afghanistan via Pakistan, acetic anhydride and other chemicals were being illicitly procured from within the country, and Afghan nationals were putting them all together to make heroin. It is here that the real story begins. How can an international syndicate of smugglers, drug manufacturers, wholesale sellers and local pushers work within the city limits of Punjab’s financial capital without the cops getting even a whiff of the entire operation? Till the NCB spills the beans about political patronage and police connivance, this case will remain illustrative of how the hush-hush underground drug trade works.

Anyone who has interacted with the police, anywhere in India, would know that nothing much happens in a locality without the local Station House Officer’s knowledge, particularly a sudden spurt in wealth creation. And it is a local politician, an MLA or a minister from the region who gets his or her favourites posted as the SHO and the DSP. Yet, the only top politician who has faced the charge of patronising drug dealers is SAD’s Bikram Singh Majithia, who spent nearly six months in jail last year. And the case does not seem to be reaching its logical conclusion, nor have the sealed-cover reports filed by former DGP Siddharth Chattopadhyaya in the High Court seen the light of day. Chattopadhyaya’s Special Investigation Team’s report and his own findings submitted to the court in 2018 could have triggered a clean-up in the ‘system’. Unfortunately, those who swept to power promising to clean the Augean stables seem to be happily riding the same old horses.

The Tribune had recently done a series of stories flashing light into the dark underbellies of Punjab’s cities, where drugs are openly sold and consumed. The traitorous side of this enterprise is its facilitation of Pakistan’s attempts at espionage using the drug network. All that the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence needs to do is to push the Afghan opium crop (or processed heroin) across the International Border (IB) to launch its agents and to run its network. To a large extent, the cross-border drone droppings of drugs have been stopped because of a vigilant BSF. The detection of a four-fold jump with 250-plus instances of drone activity along the border is to the credit of the newly-enthused BSF local leadership. Interestingly, the local police were not amused when the BSF started monitoring the dubious ‘controlled operations’ which involved police informers calling in drone drops. The BSF has now put a complete end to this not-so-controlled operation.

This is not just a Punjab problem. About 24 tonnes of various kinds of drugs were seized in Haryana in the last one year. The newly sworn-in CM of Himachal Pradesh too has identified the tackling of the drug trade and addiction among his administrative priorities. Unfortunately, Punjab has the additional burden of the legacy of militancy, which let loose criminals of all hues, some of them in uniform; and, of course, the immense responsibility of guarding 425 km of IB against a drug-pushing neighbour. Much of the stuff that is dropped by the drones is meant for Delhi and elsewhere.

The NCB, which lost its credibility while hounding Shah Rukh Khan’s son, should redeem itself by roping in other agencies, and the proven Punjab Police officers (some of them helped in the recent bust), to make a coordinated effort to expose the patrons and participants of Punjab’s drug trade. This is a fight for our future.

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