Gurugram: Despite lockdown, drug seizure saw 100% jump till June

GURUGRAM: In the first six months of the year, three of which saw the strictest pandemic-induced lockdown, while recovery of smuggled liquor dropped 60% compared to 2019, the recovery of drugs, particularly marijuana, increased 100%, according to data shared by Gurugram Police. Officers have linked this to a rise in demand for such drugs at a time when alcohol consumption dipped because liquor shops were shut through April and May, and pubs and bars that serve liquor not were not open for public.
In between January and June in 2019, Gurugram police had seized around 203 kg of drugs, including 188 kg of marijuana. This year, till June police had recovered 405 kg of drugs, including 334 kg of marijuana.

Cops also observed that for although consumption of high-end opioids like heroin increased manifold in Gurugram over the past few years, the trend was reversed during the lockdown, and marijuana, which is much cheaper and easily available, became more popular. Also, most of the trading for the expensive, more refined drugs happens at nightclubs which were shut because of the pandemic, said the police officers.
In the last two months, even as the lockdown regulations were in place, a large amount of drugs, including an entire truck loaded with marijuana was recovered in the neighbouring of Mewat, which shares a border with Rajasthan.
In April, city police made a major recovery of around 107 kg of marijuana from a shop in Udyog Vihar and arrested three people, including a Bangaldeshi national.
The banned substance was smuggled from Odisha before the lockdown and was supposed to be supplied in Delhi-NCR.
On June 26, cops seized 112 kg marijuana from Sadhrana village and arrested a person named Kuldeep in relation to drug trafficking. Two days later, police had arrested a 24-year-old man with 680 gm of heroin worth Rs 80 lakh from Sector 66. One of the biggest recoveries in the region was made on July 6 in Mewat when police seized a truck coming from Rajasthan and recovered 822 kg of marijuana filled in 90 gunny bags. A man named Sahil was held for the crime.
“Marijuana is smuggled into Delhi-NCR from Odisha, Rajasthan, West Bengal and eastern UP,” said a senior police officer, adding that the drug is then supplied to retailers in small parcels weighing 1 kg or 2 kg each, and from them, it reached the individual consumer in even smaller packets of 5 gm and 10 gm.
Most of those engaged in sale of marijuana are slum dwellers, street vendors and daily-wage workers. They sell it to a network of clients and their contacts. “They do not sell drugs to strangers and one needs to be referred by a regular client,” said the officer, adding that some of those involved in the trade are addicts and they do it to fund their own addiction.
ACP (crime) Preet Pal Sangwan said crime units continuously work to track and arrest drug peddlers. In the last 24 hours, crime units have arrested three different persons in three different cases of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act— one from Hans Enclave with 200 grams of marijuana, one from Arjun Nagar with 65 grams of charas and another from Sector 84 with 1.1 kg of marijuana.
“We arrest drug peddlers almost on a daily basis,” Sangwan said, adding that mostly these people are the last in the supply chain. He added they try to disrupt the entire chain.
But cops admit that disrupting supply completely is very challenging, mainly because of high demand and guaranteed, handsome reward at every point of the chain. “People are ready to take risks to make easy money through drug trade, and there are numerous people who are ready to pay for it,” said a police officer.