Amritsar hotel attached in crackdown on drug trade
The Batala police have attached a popular Amritsar hotel located close to the Golden Temple for allegedly serving as a warehouse of heroin smuggled from Pakistan and facilitating meetings of narcotics dealers for the transportation of the drug to parts of India.
According to the police, Room No. 103 of Alpine Inn was always kept reserved for such dealings and never entered in the hotel register for occupancy.
The action came on Thursday when police sleuths raided the hotel located on Ajit Nagar Road as part of their anti-drug operations.
The hotel owner, Balbir Singh along with seven others has been nominated in an FIR lodged in this regard. They all are on the run. “Nobody could even suspect that the hotel was engaged in drug trafficking in a big way till we got a whiff of it last week,” said Batala SSP Suhail Qasim Mir.
“Room No. 103 was a drug den and being used to facilitate heroin smuggling operations. Tangible evidence has confirmed that the room was pivotal in the smuggling of heroin sourced from Pakistan,” he added.
The property is worth Rs 4.5 crore and has been attached against under the NDPS Act.
The SSP said the hotel management violated standard-operating norms by “deliberately failing” to maintain proper guest records as is being meticulously done by other hotels and restaurants.
“So much so, Room No. 103 was not even entered in the hotel register, which points to the direct complicity of the management in shielding illegal activities,” said the officer.
A senior officer said the room was strategically used to evade detection and subsequently support the narcotics supply chain.
The freezing of Hotel Alpine Inn is part of an ongoing crackdown by the Batala police to dismantle the financial and logistical networks facilitating drug smuggling.
The hotel has joined a growing list of 52 properties attached so far, collectively valued at Rs 27 crore.
