Drugs and bullets

Why in the News

A chemist has been charged with killing anti drug trafficking activist Parvinder Singh Jhota after the chemist’s allegedly illegal drug business came under threat. Social media influencer Mad Sandhu was allegedly killed in a planned hit by a transnational syndicate, a crime network working across borders. With targeted killings of police personnel and local politicians, these cases show Punjab‘s drug trade becoming a public safety crisis.

Why has Punjab’s drug trade turned violent?

1. What the nexus is: Drug trafficking and organised crime feed each other: drug money funds gangs, and gangs protect the trade. It works like a business hiring its own armed guards.
2. Gangster networks: Punjab’s large scale drug trade is tied to gangster networks, and cross border drug smuggling is a key source of their money.
3. Entry point and market: Punjab’s border location makes it both an entry point and a market for drugs. Smugglers use many transport modes, so security forces struggle to cover every route.
4. Industrial leakage: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime reported in June that India’s pharmaceutical and chemical industries let bad actors divert precursors, the chemicals used to make drugs.
5. The takeaway: Drugs in Punjab are no longer only a health problem, because the money behind them now pays for violence.

How widespread is drug dependence?

1. Opioid dependence: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) survey, Magnitude of Substance Use in India, found 1.28% of Punjab’s population dependent on opioids (opium based drugs such as heroin), against 0.26% nationally.
2. Dated evidence: The survey’s latest round is still 2017-18, so policy rests on old data.
3. Overdose deaths: National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data show Punjab’s drug overdose deaths rising from 89 the year before to 106 in 2024.
4. Likely undercount: A death counts only if a doctor certifies drugs as the cause, so deaths from long term complications and unhygienic drug use are missed.

Why are citizens taking on traffickers themselves?

1. Digital platforms: Both recent killings involved digital platforms, and the Sandhu hit used interstate escape routes.
2. Assassinations with ease: Crime syndicates carry out assassinations with disquieting ease. Punjab is caught between local trafficking and vigilantism, people enforcing the law on their own.
3. Cross border suspicion: Some killings have raised suspicions of cross border support, prompting demands to involve enforcement agencies.
4. Public backing for Jhota: Jhota’s hostile tactics against traffickers enjoyed public support. Authorities need to examine why people are bypassing formal reporting channels.

Do arrests and seizures show success?

1. Yudh Nashian Virudh: Punjab’s 2025 campaign ‘Yudh Nashian Virudh’ (war against drugs) claims 68,850 arrests of alleged traffickers.
2. Assets targeted: The campaign also claims the attachment or confiscation of assets worth ₹319 crore.
3. Arrests are not convictions: Registering a case is not a conviction, so arrest counts do not show how many traffickers were punished.
4. Attachment is not forfeiture: Attachment only freezes a property. Forfeiture, the final transfer of ownership to the state, needs a separate legal order.

Challenges

1. Porous border: Punjab’s international border lets consignments cross by several routes, including drone deliveries.
2. Leaky legal industry: Pharmaceutical and chemical units are hard to monitor, so controlled chemicals slip into drug making.
3. Insider collusion: Trafficking survives on corrupt facilitators within the system, which erodes public trust in the police.
4. Weak treatment network: Limited rehabilitative care leaves dependent users without help, so demand for drugs persists.

Way Forward

1. Supply disruption: The State should reduce the availability of harmful drugs and disrupt wholesale supply chains, as its narcotics policy requires.
2. Financial investigation: Police should probe the financing and logistics of trafficking networks alongside the targeted killings inquiries.
3. Collusion crackdown: Punjab should identify corrupt facilitators and dismantle institutional collusion.
4. Protection for informants: Authorities should protect threatened individuals, so citizens report through formal channels.
5. Rehabilitation access: The State should expand access to rehabilitative care for dependent users.

Conclusion

Punjab’s drug trade now pays for organised violence, so enforcement measured in arrests and seizures no longer shows whether the State is winning. Convictions, completed forfeitures and public trust in formal reporting channels are what to watch.

Back2Basics: Magnitude of Substance Use in India survey

1. Commissioning ministry: The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment commissioned the survey.
2. Conducting body: The National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC) of AIIMS, New Delhi, conducted it, and the report was released in 2019.
3. Coverage: A national household survey of people aged 10 to 75 across all States and Union Territories.
4. Main finding: Alcohol was the most commonly used substance, followed by cannabis and opioids.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2018, GS3, 15 marks] India’s proximity to two of the world’s biggest illicit opium-growing states has enhanced her internal security concerns. Explain the linkages between drug trafficking and other illicit activities such as gunrunning, money laundering and human trafficking. What counter-measures should be taken to prevent the same?”