In a shocking revelation, Meghalaya Director General of Police, Lajja Ram Bishnoi, on Saturday, said that the drug traffickers in the hill state, have been providing free narcotic drugs to the youngsters, in a bid to increase the number of drug users.
The state police chief expressed concern over the shifting of the drug menace in the state from the urban areas to other remote parts of the state.
The top cop also raised concern over the alarming increase in the number of young girls in the state taking to narcotic drugs use.
Speaking exclusively to ABP Live, Bishnoi said, “Earlier, the drug traffickers used to contact the consumers directly but now they take the help of middlemen as they have changed their strategy and started providing drugs to the consumers free of cost so that they can increase the number of narcotic substance users with their supply remaining intact.”
The police chief, while taking a strong note of it, said that such tactics by the drug traffickers could lead to serious social problems among the families of the drug users as they might resort to illegal activities like stealing money and other valuables from their homes.
“When a drug user is arrested, they tell us that they belong to a very poor family and the narcotic drugs had been provided to them by the drug traffickers free of cost,” he said.
“If they are being provided with free narcotic drugs, the traffickers will do it only for a certain period of time and after that once they get addicted, the traffickers will start demanding money from them. Under these circumstances, to get their substance, the drug users will resort to any illegal means, Bishnoi added.”
The police chief said that drug addiction can lead to several crimes in the family, including theft and violence against the family members.
On the other hand, Bishnoi added that the number of illegal drugs seized in Meghalaya between 2022 and 2023 has broken the record of the past 50 years.
Giving details, Bishnoi said that the Meghalaya police have arrested as many as 234 drug peddlers and users, including 20 women in 2022, and seized drugs valued at Rs 50 crore.
The seized drug includes over seven kilogram of heroin, estimated to be over Rs 45.22 crore, and over 27,000 bottles of cough syrup, valued at Rs 1.38 crore.
Moreover, cannabis weighing nearly four tonnes, opium weighing over 600 grams, and over 12,800 methamphetamine tablets were also seized during the period.
The recovery in 2022 has surpassed the recorded seizure of the past 50 years in Meghalaya with 116 cases being registered.
Bishnoi said that this year too, the trend of drug use and arrests is no different. At least 80 people have been arrested and over three kilograms of heroin, 140 kilograms of cannabis, 60,000 addictive tablets, 22,000 bottles of addictive cough syrups and Rs 28 lakh cash have been seized from their possession.
The top cop said that about 25 per cent of the accused arrested in drug-related cases belonged to the northeastern states of Tripura, Mizoram, and Manipur, besides Punjab, Bihar, and Bengal.