Chandigarh, November 2
Cascading effects of the financial meltdown may have inflicted severe blows on economies and the fiscal health of various nations and states, but the drug trade continues to flourish.
Intriguingly, it is all-cash transactions that make the world’s largest illicit trade unique. Though normal business sustains with 2 to 5 per cent returns on investments, the drug trade promises profit margins between 100 per cent and 5000 per cent.
It is these margins and the umbrella of protection provided by its “patrons” that lure the young and the influential into the trade. “Drug joints” that operate without any check in cities are those that are owned by “bigwigs” of society. As The Tribune carried out the investigation, information about such “joints” poured in.
Though some of the “joints” get legal protection with a Bar licence, what is actually supplied, sold and consumed there is a job the Narcotics Control Bureau and the police should be doing. Whatever is alleged may be dismissed as “hearsay”.
Since supplies are made against cash payments, addicts can go to any extent to get money for their daily doses. The Tribune started the series by quoting an instance wherein a youth strangled his mother for allegedly refusing to give him money to buy drugs.Yesterday, a man in the Khadur Sahib area in the border belt battered his wife to death for refusing to provide him money for the purpose.Two killings in three days and both victims being women is alarming.
These are two cases that have been reported, but many more in which residents are battered, beaten up, insulted and even turned out of their own houses for refusing to finance the addictions of their offspring, spouses
or even parents go unreported in the state every week.
“Recession,” say psychiatrists, “works either way.Those facing bankruptcy because of failures in business, trade or industry or their investments turning sour also look for solace in drugs.” Peddlers are ruthless and give no credits. If they get huge profit margins, they also run the risk of being caught, prosecuted,convicted and fined. Even their properties can be confiscated. Unfortunately,not to talk of convictions,many are not even caught.
Growing unemployment is adding huge numbers regularly both to those in the trade as well as consumers. Though the size of the trade is much bigger than even the state Budget, convictions are as rare as India winning an Olympics medal. A look at the prosecution and conviction record of Punjab reveals that in the past five years, the total number of convictions may have hardly touched the three-figure mark.
The low conviction rate is attributed to a lack of coordination among different investigating agencies. Further, it is the huge margins that give those controlling the trade enough resources to take the help of their “connections” both in the law and order agencies as well as in the prosecution wing. Sudarshan Singh, who after retiring as an assistant inspector-general of police has been working as a private detective, finds the entire system “stinkingly
corrupt”.
(To be concluded)
