Chandigarh, Apr 4 — Punjab is recording its highest-ever pace of drug-related arrests, with police detaining 5,835 suspects by March 31 — averaging 64 arrests per day.
The police campaign, dubbed Yudh Nasheyan Virudh, saw 4,706 arrests in March alone, a steep jump from 12,255 total arrests last year — an average of 33 per day. The previous high was in 2014, with 17,001 arrests, or 47 daily, during a peak of political pressure on the then-ruling SAD-BJP coalition.
“Crackdowns always pick up near elections,” a senior official said, pointing to historical patterns. In 2014, political commitments to address rampant drug trafficking led to heightened enforcement. That year, even the BJP campaigned on drug eradication as a core promise, triggering a surge in arrests.
The trend continued under the Congress government in 2017, with 12,356 arrests reported during Capt Amarinder Singh’s tenure, who had vowed to eliminate drugs within weeks of assuming office.
Despite the surge in numbers, enforcement gaps remain. The Punjab Police told the Punjab and Haryana High Court it had arrested 875 of 1,846 wanted smugglers. “Nearly 1,000 are still absconding,” the police acknowledged in court.
Opposition parties accuse the government of using the crackdown for optics. “The police action is limited to small consumers only to inflate arrest numbers,” said SAD spokesperson Dr. Daljeet Cheema. “These crackdowns have become mere political gimmicks. If the campaign was truly working, we’d see addicts flooding hospitals with withdrawal symptoms — which we are not.”
AAP MP and spokesperson Malvinder Jit Singh Kang rejected the criticism and claimed the party had shown political will lacking in previous governments. “We’ve made a strong beginning and will show more encouraging results in the coming months,” he said. “We acted against officers who colluded with smugglers, while the Akali and Congress governments rewarded them with key posts like SSP.”
With elections approaching in Punjab, the anti-drug campaign’s trajectory — and political messaging around it — appears likely to intensify further.
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