Floating population in Deeda Sansian village queers the pitch for police

Ravi Dhaliwal

Deeda Sansian, June 16

A village — Deeda Sansian — which has gained infamy for being a haven for brewing illicit liquor and supplying drugs for the last five decades, is turning out to be the proverbial Achilles Heel for the Gurdaspur cops.

It falls in the jurisdiction of the Dinanagar police station and is located near National Highway (NH) 54. Deeda Sansian came into the spotlight on Friday when three dead bodies, all of middle aged men, were found on a single day. All of them bore syringe marks. The police, however, claim that the “bodies were reported on a single day although all the deaths did not occur the same day”.

Villagers, however, say all three persons died on the same day and that too after injecting an overdose of heroin.

Several generations of inhabitants of the village have been in the business of producing illegal hooch. “However, in the last few years two things have happened. One was that the cops upped the ante while secondly profits from illegal activities started dropping drastically. Hence, villagers changed their product and with it their modus-operandi too. The new product is heroin,” said an old-timer who claims to have seen destruction of lives and livelihoods of hundreds of young people.

He said, “And the new modus-operandi involved is bringing the drug from villages located near the international border where drones often fly in from Pakistan and drop contraband in neatly packed yellow nylon packets. Yellow, because the colour offers enough illumination at night for the recipient to identify packets even from a distance.”

He further said, “The village is so famous for selling heroin that youngsters from far away districts, and even from Himachal Pradesh, come here to have their daily dose of dope. The police raids have an effect for a day or two after which villagers are back to business. Excess consumption of opium or poppy husk is never fatal. Excess heroin surely causes death.”

Although Sukhwinder Pal Singh, DSP, Dinanagar, claimed that only post-mortem report could reveal whether the three deaths were drug induced or not, village elders say they had no doubt that all the three had died due to excess injection of heroin in their bodies.

“There are syringe marks on the bodies of all the three. Over the years, we have trained our eyes. We can never be hoodwinked. We can give you a written assurance that the deceased had injected heroin,” said a village septuagenarian who claims to have been witness to many such tragedies in the past.

Repeated raids, instead of having the desired effect, have made villagers immune to such exercises.

Officials engaged in fighting the drug menace claim that it had become almost an insurmountable task for them to curb it because of the floating population of the village. Floating population is a term used to describe a group of people who reside at a particular place for a certain time period before moving to other places.

Whenever the Gurdaspur police tighten the screws in Deeda Sansian village, smugglers move to Channi Belli village which is in Himachal Pradesh. Like Deeda Sansian, Channi Belli, too, has acquired a reputation of a drug haven. Being in Himachal, the Gurdaspur police have no jurisdiction whatsoever over this village.

There have been numerous instances of smugglers taking refuge in Channi Belli once the Gurdaspur cops decide to turn on the heat on them. Channi Belli village falls in Indora police station of Himachal and, geographically speaking, is not far away from the Dinanagar police station.

People commit a crime in Deeda Sansian and spend the next few days in Channi Belli trying to evade the cops. And, without any doubt, they are successful in keeping the policemen at an arm’s length. This is because they know the tricks of the trade better than the cops.

Interestingly, whenever cops conduct a raid, word spreads fast and villagers are quick to lock their houses. “We migrate to Channi Belli village where we have relatives to take care of us,” said a villager.

“The raids had stopped during the elections due to which small-time smugglers bringing in heroin from near the international border to the village had an easy time. Now, these smugglers have retreated into their hideouts because Gurdaspur SSP Harish Dayama has stepped on the gas-pedal,” he said.

So much so, Dayama himself conducted raids at the village today. He insists that this time the police would make sure that the village was cleansed of heroin. “This time it is a fight to the finish. It’s a battle where no quarters are asked for and none given. Heroin will be wiped off the Gurdaspur map,” the SSP said.