Nurpur, July 2
Dharminder Kumar, alias Gobinda, of Chhhani village under the jurisdiction of the Indora police station of Nurpur police district was convicted by the local Additional Session Court yesterday. Kumar was sentenced to four years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 20,000 in an NDPS case registered against him in September 2016 by the Indora police.
The police had seized 5.50 gm heroin (‘chitta’) from his possession and, after completing the investigation, filed a charge sheet in the court on December 26, 2016. As per police records procured from the district police, Kumar had previously been convicted by the Additional Session Court, Pathankot (Punjab), and sentenced to four-month imprisonment in a separate NDPS case registered against him by the Pathankot police in January 2013. Apart from these two ongoing convictions, the suspect has been booked in 10 NDPS cases at the Damtal (Nurpur police district), Pathankot, Nangalboor and Tibber police stations. Nurpur SP Ashok Ratan told The Tribune that the convict was a notorious drug peddling culprit and was still undergoing judicial remand at the Dharamsala jail. The Damtal police had arrested him twice after commercial quantities of heroin were recovered from his possession. “The police had seized 259 gm heroin from his possession, registering a case under the NDPS Act on November 29, 2020. After he was granted bail, he was nabbed once again, this time with 302 gm heroin by the Damtal police on December 3, 2020,” he said. The police, after conducting a financial investigation of the alleged peddler, had seized cash amounting to Rs 14.50 lakh, 62 gm gold jewellery and 466 gm silver jewellery from his possession, the SP added.
He said the police had frozen his immovable property worth Rs 7.28 crore amassed through illegal drug trafficking, and procured a freezing order of a property worth Rs 5.96 crore from the NDPS court-cum- competent authority, New Delhi, on June 9, 2021. The Nurpur district police had launched a special anti-narcotic drive against inter-state drug smugglers, and it would intensify efforts in the days to come, the SP added.