Punjab drug menace: Can't break supply chains without going after the big fish, says ICSSR study

Jupinderjit Singh

Chandigarh, May 1

A study commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) says that political leaders are patronising drug smuggling and some leaders are also involved in the trade.

Dr Ranjit Singh Ghuman, Professor of Eminence, GNDU, Amritsar, along with Dr Gurinder Kaur and Dr Jatinder Singh, both assistant professors with the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh, carried out a study based on 3,386 addicts. The focus of the study is on Punjab but the adjoining districts of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu are also included in the study.

Significantly, the date collection period from addicts was 2017-2022 during the Capt Amarinder Singh-led Congress government. Most of them had been taking drugs since 2012-2017 (SAD-BJP regime when the drug menace had started making headlines, besides documentaries and movies).

A number of special investigative reports of this period had exposed a deep police-drug-politician nexus. An Additional Inspector General of Police (AIG) Raj Jit Singh and an Inspector (ORP) Inderjit Singh had been dismissed from service.

Former Akali minister Bikram Singh Majithia is also facing charges of facilitating the network of drug smugglers, though the police under the AAP government are yet to file a challan against him in the court 17 months after he was booked.

Dr Ghuman said the study “Dynamics of Drug Addiction and Abuse in India” is under-publication with Routledge, the UK. “The empirical part of the study dwells on the quantitative and qualitative data and information collected from 3,386 addicts. The primary data was collected from 950 addicts and their household members (950), 190 unidentified addicts, 616 controlled group (households with no addict), 640 participants in 77 focus group discussions and 40 case studies across the states,” the study states.

“The main objective of our study is to understand the socio-cultural and politico-economic dynamics of drug addiction other than liquor and tobacco,” Dr Ghuman said.

More than 95 per cent of all respondents said politicians distributed intoxicants and drugs to woo voters. They disclosed that some political leaders had been patronising the drug business through a well-structured network and stressed that some were involved in the drug business. The addicts talked about a deep nexus between political leaders, police officials and big drug suppliers/smugglers. They said the drugs supply continued as the ‘big fishes’ were not being caught. The participants said very emphatically that without punishing the ‘mother of all thieves’it is virtually impossible to break the supply chain of drugs.

The study credits that media reports have also highlighted the unholy nexus between the police, smugglers and politicians. It notes that the bureaucrats’ tacit support to the drug menace often does not come to the fore but tacit connivance of some of them cannot be ruled out, according to the respondents.