Tracking e-payments helped police nab 15 drug peddlers

Sameer Singh

Shimla, June 14

The Shimla police have arrested 15 drug peddlers and the kingpin of a drug trafficking racket in the past five months. Besides employing core policing methods, the Police Department relied on digital technology to track and apprehend inter-state drug peddlers.

270 cases in 5 months

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• 270 cases have been registered under the NDPS Act in the past five months
• 400 drug peddlers have been arrested in Shimla and other places

The monitoring of e-payments between drug peddlers and traders has played a pivotal role in tracking them down. However, to avoid being tracked, the peddlers use different bank accounts and six to eight mobile phones to deposit money online. But the police with the help of the cyber cell managed to track the e-payment trails of the peddlers. The police have identified and attached properties acquired by drug peddlers through ill-gotten money.

Shimla SP Sanjeev Gandhi said, “A majority of the inter-state drug peddlers are history-sheeters with numerous cases registered against them. A drug trade kingpin based at Kaithal in Haryana had a well-organised network in the region and had links with peddlers in five states, including Himachal. Following the trail of online financial transactions between him and other drug peddlers helped us to track him down to Zirakpur (Punjab) and arrest him.”

He said, “We have got his bank account having Rs 60 lakh freezed. We are in the process of attaching his movable and immovable properties worth Rs 4 crore. We have got vital leads about other inter-state drug peddlers and kingpins active in the illegal trade.”

As per the police records, in the past five months, 270 cases have been registered under the NDPS Act and 400 peddlers arrested in Shimla and other places, double the number of cases registered and arrests made during the same period the previous year.

Gandhi said, “Our focus is on breaking the supply chain to reduce the availability of different kinds of drugs that comes to Himachal from neighbouring states.”