Punjab slept over unholy nexus between officials and drug mafia?
9 Jan 2016 12:38 AM GMT
A former top cop of the Punjab police told Millennium Post that the audacious terror strike on the IAF base was a stark display of the complicity of the police with drug smugglers, as they did not wake up to SAD leader Maninder Singh Aulakh’s admission way back in 2013 that he had used the state government vehicles for running the drug syndicate.
On November 12, 2013, the Punjab Police arrested Arjuna awardee wrestler-turned-drug peddler Jagdish Singh Bhola on charges of orchestrating the multi-crore drug racket in the state. Soon after his arrest, Aulakh was nabbed and it was during his questioning by the Punjab police that he revealed of using state government vehicles for smuggling drugs.
“Pathankot is not the first instance where government vehicles (appear to) have been used for drug smuggling. There have been cases when state officials turned into facilitators by offering their official vehicles to smuggle narcotic substances,” said former Punjab DGP (Prisons) Shashi Kant.
He added that the Gurdaspur SP’s late night visit to a holy shrine must be thoroughly probed as there were multiple cases in which state officials’ vehicles were used.
Speaking on the state government’s approach to crack the nexus between officials and smugglers, Kant, the then head of Intelligence, said: “The intelligence department had prepared a four-page report and gave it to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in 2007. That report contains the names of some highly influential politicians, Punjab police officials and security personnel. That report never saw the light of day, let alone any action.”
Pointing to stark similarities in the way attacks are being carried out, the top official said, “The Pathankot attack was almost identical to the terror strike in Dinanagar, in which terrorists had hijacked a white Maruti and later stormed a police station. These terrorists had also spent some time hiding in nearby villages at the border, which could not have been possible without local support on the Indian side.”
Explaining the modus operandi of drug smuggling at the Indo-Pak border, Kant said, “Despite heavy BSF presence at the border, there is some gap of about 85 km in riverine areas, which are located mostly to the west of Gurdaspur and Pathankot. For heavy consignment of drugs, militants usually prefer to use fishing boats and couriers.”
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