The two brothers are Baljeet Singh and Ranjeet Singh of Kalotha village of Fatehabad district. The Haryana Police have succeeded in getting orders to attach properties of a drug smuggler and his brother claiming the property concerned was acquired by them by earning money through smuggling of drugs.
According to Fatehabad SP Rajesh Kumar, the competent authority under the NDPS Act has ordered attachment of about one-acre land and one tractor of the accused. The two brothers are Baljeet Singh and Ranjeet Singh of Kalotha village of Fatehabad district.
The SP told The Indian Express that Ranjeet Singh has already been convicted in four cases under the NDPS Act while his brother Baljeet Singh is facing eight cases under the NDPS Act. Baljeet is currently lodged in Ajmer jail of Rajasthan while Ranjeet is in Hisar jail. Police sources say the total value of the proposed attached properties is over Rs 30 lakh.
Police officials believe the latest move will send a strong message to the drug smugglers that they may lose their properties if they continue carrying out illegal activities. “We have got orders to attach properties of two brothers under the NDPS Act. It was proved by the police that this property was acquired by them by earning money through smuggling of drugs,” said the IPS officer Rajesh Kumar.
“With as many as 12 cases lodged against them under the NDPS Act, it appears they were continuously carrying out smuggling. The police keep an eye on the properties acquired through illegal means. In such cases, the accused are unable to justify the properties purchased by them. In the current case too, the accused said agriculture is their main profession. We took details of their properties from the revenue department. They could not explain about the source of properties except the ancestral land,” he added.
The SP said they were trying to identify such more smugglers from whom the commercial quantity of the drugs was recovered. “Such persons work in an organised way,” he added.
In its campaign against drug smugglers, the police Sunday arrested a local villager Vikram Bhambhu with 1.01 kg opium apart from recovering an illegal pistol and live cartridges.
“During the questioning, the accused said he brought opium and the pistol from Uttar Pradesh. He is facing as many as 18 cases which include attempt to murder, loot and dacoity. He had come out from the jail only a month back,” said the SP.
In the past nine months, the police have arrested 529 persons under the NDPS Act in Fatehabad district. As much as 6.3 kg heroin, almost 33 kg opium, 640 kg poppy husk and 2.56 lakh intoxicating tablets have been recovered from the smugglers during this period. Fatehabad is a bordering district of Haryana.
Police says that it has intensified heat on drug-peddlers in line with the government’s commitment to make Haryana a completely drug-free state which has resulted in the seizure of a whopping 11.5 tonnes of narcotics during the first half of 2020 from across the state.
This year, till June, the police had filed a total of 1,343 cases under the NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act in Haryana in which 1,821 people were arrested on the charges of peddling and possession of drugs across the state.
In a bid to prevent drug trafficking, the police say, they have taken a series of steps which include increased inter-state cooperation for exchange of information about drug mafia.
“We have adopted a multi-pronged strategy in fighting with drug menace as a result of which our field units including the Special Task Force have dismantled the potential supply of almost all types of narcotics in the state,” DGP Manoj Yadav had stated earlier.
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