PK Jaiswar Amritsar, November 8 Entry of new smugglers in the illegal drug trade has posed a new challenge for the Punjab police. If the police officials are to be believed in the seizures of heroin made in the recent past, a considerable number of persons were new entrants and had no previous record of drug trafficking. They entered the illegal trade for easy money and under the influence of notorious drug peddlers. Amritsar rural police chief Vikram Jeet Duggal said the police had registered around 269 cases of drug peddling in the rural belt and over 300 were nabbed in these cases. “We are astonished to see a large number of them as new entrants. This has posed a greater challenge before the police as it is difficult for the police teams to suspect them to be drug peddlers,” said Duggal. The state government has adopted a zero tolerance attitude towards drug traffickers. Majority of them were put behind bars and their nexus was smashed by identifying their forward and backward links, he adds. The police had recently nabbed Gurpal Singh and Gupreet Singh, both residents of Rorawala Kala village located near Indo-Pak border, with 12-kg high quality heroin from their possession. The duo had no previous record. They had smuggled the same on the directions of Varinderjit Singh and Jagroop Singh. Though Varinderjit had a case of drug peddling, his brother Jagroop was also a new entrant. He had returned from Dubai where he had come in contact with Pakistan-based smugglers. A senior police official said, “Entry of new faces in the illegal trade shows how deep-rooted are the tentacles of drug abuse in the society. We need more stringent measures against those involved in it besides planning new strategies by way of thinking out of the box to wean away the youth from this deadly menace.”

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