Baddi police caught napping as peddler nabbed by Shimla cops

The Baddi police have been caught napping, with the Rampur police in Shimla district arresting the kingpin of an inter-state heroin peddling gang last week from Baddi.

The accused, identified as Daleep Kumar (37), alias Radhe, supplied men to security agencies in Baddi operating in various industrial houses.

Tracking origin of illicit trade

• The Rampur police are now undertaking financial investigations into the case to trace the network and genesis of the illicit trade, which was operational in Baddi as well as nearby districts like Shimla

His mother too has been allegedly found lending a hand in the drug-peddling racket, operated through an inter-state network. He was arrested from his residence in ward number 8 of Baddi and hails from Maholi village in Kumarsain in Shimla district.

The Rampur police are now undertaking financial investigations into the case to trace the network and genesis of the illicit trade, which was operational in Baddi as well as nearby districts like Shimla.

The revelation has sent alarm bells ringing in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh (BBN) industrial area where several security agencies operate. Cases of agency sleuths being involved in criminal activities like thefts have been coming to fore every now and then.

This is the first such case where a security sleuth provider has been found operating a drug-peddling gang. Since the secuity agencies operate in various industrial houses, they can conveniently operate on a large scale given the plethora of men under their disposal. With the illicit trade offering a good margin, youths have been falling prey both to the trade as well as heroin consumption.

The police have virtually no control over such agencies as they neither verify the credentials of their staff from the police nor seek any registration. Though a move was initiated some years ago to register these agencies and cancel their registration if they desisted from verifying the antecedents of their staff, it has failed to sustain.

Additional SP Baddi Ashok Verma stated that the need to register the security agencies was being felt in this industrial belt. The agencies should ensure that the information pertaining to the men who are laid off for any untoward reason should be communicated to the police and the industry associations so that they were not hired by other agencies. This can help curb criminal activities.

With the Baddi police being lax in tracing the forward and backward linkages of drug peddlers, the arrest of a drug kingpin from Baddi has sullied their image. The role of the Baddi police was already under scanner of the state high court in two cases where four policemen having been arrested and two others, including a DSP, evading arrest.

While the neighbouring Solan police have arrested more than 107 drug peddlers, including 96 major inter-state suppliers, in the last one year, the Baddi police was yet to act in a big way to apprehend the drug traders.