The recovery of another consignment of heroin worth over Rs 100 crore in Jammu by police has once again made it clear that Pakistan is not only sending militants but is also pushing narcotics into the Himalayan region.
On Thursday J&K police seized 52 kilograms of heroin worth over Rs 100 crore during a naka checking at Jhajjar Kotli of Jammu district. The packets carried mark 1999 and according to the police, such packets had earlier also been seized which were smuggled from Pakistan.
“The consignment was being taken from Kashmir to Punjab and it was part of narco-terror racket under which the cash incurred from selling narco products, smuggled from Pakistan, is being pumped into terrorism,” J&K police chief Dilbagh Singh told reporters.
He said in some of the cases, drones are also used to smuggle narcotics from across the border “whose proceeds are later pumped for fuelling terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.” In Jammu region alone, the police have seized 185 kg heroin valued at Rs 360 crore and arrested 1,500 persons in the last two years.
Singh had recently said that Pakistan was now targeting Kashmiri youngsters by making them addicted to drugs. “They (Pakistan) are repeating the same dirty game that they played in Punjab. First giving arms training and later spoiling the youth with drugs,” he said.
A survey carried out by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre of the AIIMS, New Delhi on the “Magnitude of Substance Use in India” placed Jammu and Kashmir at the fifth spot with over six lakh people affected by drug abuse. The figures reveal that 90% of the substance abusers fall in the age group of 17 to 33-years.
In the last stages of his life even Hurriyat hawk and pro-Pakistan leader, late Syed Ali Geelani had apparently realised that the country which he supported all along was pushing Generation-Next of Kashmir towards drugs. He issued a statement on drug trafficking in July 2020.
Geelani, without naming Pakistan, had expressed serious concern over drug abuse in Kashmir. Although he had not named the neighbouring country in his statement, it had evoked a strong reaction from across the border which led to him being ousted from the post of a chairman of the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference, which was led by him.
A senior doctor at a drug de-addiction center in Srinagar said that after selling illusions and 'Azadi' dreams, Pakistan has now started selling drugs to Kashmiri youth.
“The huge seizures of heroin by police and other security agencies have proven it beyond doubt that people sitting across the LoC want to have a drug addict in every house in Kashmir to fight the proxy war which commenced in 1990,” he added.
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