Chandigarh: Punjab Police have arrested 366 drug smugglers/suppliers after registering 258 first information reports (FIRs), including 28 commercial, under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) act across the state in the last week.
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Headquarters Sukhchain Singh Gill, while addressing his weekly Press Conference here on Monday, said that the Police have also recovered 8.44Kg Heroin, 7.75Kg opium, 17.64Kg Ganja, 19 quintals of poppy husk, and 59k tablets/capsules/injections/vials of Pharma opioids besides recovering Rs 1.22 crores drug money from their possession.
He said that with 15 more Proclaimed Offenders (POs)/Absconders in NDPS cases arrested in the last week, the total number of arrests reached 444 since the special drive to arrest POs/absconders was started on July 5, 2022.
Pertinently, Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab Gaurav Yadav had given strict instructions to all the CPs/SSPs to investigate backward and forward linkages minutely in each and every case, especially related to drug recoveries, even if they recover a meager amount of drugs.
Meanwhile, on the direction of Chief Minister Punjab Bhagwant Mann to make Punjab a drug-free state, extensive anti-drug drives have been launched by the Punjab Police to combat the menace of drugs from the border State. The DGP has also strictly ordered all the CPs/SSPs to identify all hotspots where drugs are prevalent and all top drug smugglers in their jurisdictions. He also directed the Police chiefs to effectively forfeit the property of all the arrested drug smugglers so that their ill-gotten money could be recovered.