Drug menace alarming, should be dealt with sternly: Punjab and Haryana High Court

Chandigarh, April 3

In an embarrassment for the state, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has asserted that drug menace is ‘writ large and a large number of youth are falling prey at the hands of such mafia’. The Bench also asserted that drug peddlers had successfully destroyed not only the society’s social fabric, but were finishing the youth.

Justice Sandeep Moudgil of the high court also asserted that the menace had assumed serious and alarming proportions in recent times. The accused were required to be dealt with firmly and sternly. The assertion came in a case where an accused was seeking regular bail in an FIR registered in August last year under the provisions of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act registered at Sadar police station in Jalandhar district police commissionerate.

Justice Moudgil asserted that it was of utmost importance to consider the clandestine smuggling of narcotics drugs and psychotropic substance, which had led to drug addiction among a sizeable section of the public, particularly the adolescence and students of both sexes.

Expressing deep concern, Justice Moudgil asserted that: “It has to be borne in mind that in a murder case the accused commits murder of one or two persons, while those persons who are dealing in narcotic drugs are instrumental in causing death or inflicting death blow to a number of innocent young victims, who are vulnerable.”

Justice Moudgil asserted that the petitioner’s role was not that of a law abiding citizen as evident from the records before the high court.