Protect Punjab kids from Pakistani drug lords

Punjab’s border belt is witnessing a disturbing and deeply immoral turn in India’s enduring fight against narcotics with Pakistan-based drug cartels increasingly recruiting minors as couriers. This is not a minor trend but a dangerous escalation that exploits technological shifts, legal gaps and, above all, the innocence of children. Teenagers from Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Ferozepur and Fazilka — many from families in economic distress — are being lured with a few thousand rupees, a smartphone, or, more insidiously, free drugs.The teenagers’ task is simple but perilous: retrieve drone-dropped packets of heroin or, in some cases, illegal firearms. Their clean records make them nearly invisible to law-enforcement authorities; their age makes them disposable to handlers sitting safely across the border. These children are victims, not ‘young criminals’. They are soft targets trapped in a criminal system designed across the border and enabled by vulnerabilities within our own systems. The Juvenile Justice Act is meant to reform and protect minors, but its spirit is being weaponised by organised networks that bank on lenient consequences.India cannot counter 21st-century smuggling with 20th-century reflexes. Occasional arrests, sporadic raids and polite warnings are woefully inadequate. The response must match the scale of the threat. Border surveillance requires urgent modernisation. Schools, panchayats, community leaders and civil society must build early-warning systems to identify grooming attempts. Parents need awareness; communities need vigilance; and at-risk youth need better education, skills and financial support to address the vulnerabilities that cartels prey upon. This use of minors is an assault on Punjab’s social fabric and India’s security. It threatens to trap a generation in cycles of crime, addiction and stigma. The vulnerable children must be protected from becoming the courier boys for foreign drug lords.

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