Punjab’s war on drugs is more a war on drug addicts

Those who have been arrested were merely small-time peddlers. No drug lord worth his name has been put behind bars
The Indian Express (India)
Wednesday, June 8, 2016

india-punjab-24deathsIn May 2014, stung by allegations of inaction over the rampant abuse and trafficking of drugs, the Punjab government launched an aggressive crackdown with Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal declaring: “We will spare no one.” These words resonated in police stations across the state with 17,068 arrests in 2014 and 11,593 more until December 2015. But that’s just on the surface, according to an Express investigative series on drug problem in Punjab. (See also: Punjab drugs: At Ground Zero, behind each door, a broken home | Cut and paste, cut and paste and you have a drugs FIR in Punjab)