Raising the pitch on its war against drugs on the directives of Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, the Punjab Police has decided to launch a drive against Proclaimed Offenders (POs) of drug cases, including those who had fled the country.The decision was taken on Saturday at a high-level joint meeting of the Special Task Force (STF), Intelligence Wing and Bureau of Investigation (BoI), held under the chairmanship of DGP Suresh Arora, at the Intelligence Bhawan, SAS Nagar.DGP STF Mohd. Mustafa, DGP Intelligence Dinkar Gupta, along with officers from Intelligence Wing, STF and BoI attended the meeting that had been convened to review the action against drugs and discuss the strategy to further strengthen the battle to eliminate the drug menace from the state.The meeting, which focused on synergising the efforts of district Police, Intelligence Wing and STF, proposed a series of other initiatives to intensify the efforts against drugs.
The meeting discussed preventive detention of traffickers from whom heavy recoveries have been effected. The lists of such traffickers are in the process of being prepared, the meeting was informed.Directions were given in the meeting to expedite the cases of seizing/freezing of property acquired through illegal means by drug smugglers, an official spokesperson disclosed. It was further proposed to hold a joint meeting of the District Police, Intelligence Wing and Special Task Force on a weekly basis in various districts to review action against drugs, to share information and to devise future strategy.The meeting also underlined the need to undertake media campaigns for spreading awareness against drugs and to give a further push to the DAPO and Buddy programmes of the State Government.