To check drugs, Punjab to segregate foreign inmates from locals in jails

Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 3

The Punjab government will segregate foreign nationals held for drug trafficking from other Indian prisoners in various jails of the state.

This is because foreign nationals, lodged in jails for trafficking of drugs, are reportedly spreading their business from inside the jails.

Most of these foreigners, belonging to a single nationality, are in jails for peddling small quantities of drugs. Officials in the Jails department say they are making links inside the jails with gangsters lodged there, and then using them to spread the drug trade through the gangsters’ henchmen outside.

Some cases, where these foreigners are also tying up with other drug peddlers/addicts, lodged in jails, and then using the latter’s contacts to expand their drug business outside, have also come to light.

Sixty per cent of the people currently lodged in state jails have been booked for illicit drug possession or trafficking. Thus jails are proving to be a perfect place for these clandestine meetings.

“We unearthed the nexus and have decided that not only will these foreign nationals be lodged in separate cells, but they will also have separate “out time” from the normal cells. The idea is to reduce interaction between these foreigners held for drug peddling and gangsters and other inmates lodged for being peddlers,” Jails Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa told The Tribune here on Monday. He said orders had been issued to the ADGP Jails to start the segregation of prisoners.

Information gathered by The Tribune shows that 158 of these foreigners, all of a single nationality, are under watch and will be lodged separately. While majority of them are lodged in the Patiala and Bathinda jails, almost all jails have these foreign nationals.

Cases have also been reported in recent times, where the contacts of these foreigners have met the undertrials going out for their case hearings, and tried to pass on the illicit drugs/prescription drugs to them.