Will Punjab be drug-free by May 31? DGP sets ambitious deadline - but can police deliver?

MDMA drugs

Punjab Police have set May 31 as deadline to end the drug trafficking menace that the state has been facing since years. The state police chief has directed all senior officers to firm up plans to cut narcotic supply lines effectively.

To ensure the deadline is met, Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav announced that Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs) and Commissioners of Police (CPs) would be rewarded for their "good work" and held accountable if their performance was not up to the mark.

Addressing reporters, Yadav said Punjab will be made a drug-free state in the sense that the availability of narcotics on the streets is fully culled.

The DGP emphasised the decision was a well-considered one and arrived at after Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann reviewed the ongoing anti-drug drive "Yudh Nashyan Virudh".

"We have asked all field police officers -- the SSPs and CPs -- to lead this campaign from the front so that Punjab can be made drugs-free in the true sense of the term," Yadav said.

SSPs and CPs have been directed to plan and execute whatever measures that feel are necessary and fix for themselves a target date to eliminate the menace, but it should not go beyond May 31, the police chief elucidated.

He stressed that the objective is to cut all supply lines before May 31, by which their areas should be completely free of drugs. After the deadline ends, a rigorous field assessment would be carried out to know the actual situation on the ground, Yadav said.

"Officers who perform well will be rewarded, and those with unsatisfactory results or found making will be held accountable," the police chief added while asserting that the force looks to achieve the goal in an absolutely professional manner.

"Our focus is not on a figure-based target but to completely severe the supply chains and make drugs unobtainable in Punjab," he said.

Laying out a broad strategy to fight the menace, Yadav explained that police would "call forward and backward linkages through information and interrogation" to unmask those involved in drug trafficking and eventually arrest them. "Its twin purpose is to target street-level peddlers and the big fish in one go."

"Our second mechanism is to break the financial backbone of drug smuggling... hawala networks should be dismantled. We have arrested 31 hawala operators and seized Rs 8 crore of hawala money," the DGP added.