Ajit Karn
Court Denies Bail to 5 Army Men
Srinagar: Five soldiers and four other people were denied bail after being charged with conducting a drug trafficking ring out of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara region.
For transporting narcotics from the Tangdhar region along the Line of Control, the suspects were detained last month. Additionally, police found a stash of cocaine in their hands.
Security officers have now been detained for drug smuggling from the Line of Control in Kupwara area twice in the previous two months.
On December 23, police detained 17 persons, including five police officers, as part of a significant operation on narcotics smuggling coming from Pakistan.
According to the authorities, five troops stationed in Kupwara’s Panzgam neighbourhood were engaged in drug trafficking and that narcotics were entering from Pakistan via the Tangdhar sector.
Today, when the Additional District and Sessions Judge in Kupwara was to hear the bail plea of the detained soldiers, the court issued stern remarks about the accused and denied them release.
The court ruled that while the detained soldiers were meant to be society’s guards, they really engaged in narcotics trafficking.
The accused’s detention is required, the court said, in order to apprehend additional gang members.
Naib-Subedar Puran Singh, Anil Kumar (driver), Sepoy Sushil Kumar, Naik Waseem Ahmad Mir, and Mohammad Shafiq Khan have been named as the accused troops.
Mashkoor Sheikh is one of the four individuals detained in the case (working as a porter with Army). Saleem Sheikh, Mohammad Imran Teli, and Muhammad Yousaf Kothari.
Police claim to have started a significant crackdown on drug smuggling coming out of Pakistan in recent months.
More than 160 persons implicated in drug trafficking have been the subject of 85 charges filed by the police in the past year in Kashmir’s border area.
Cross-border drug smuggling has grown to be a significant concern for the government, and security personnel’s participation in drug trafficking is exacerbating the issue.
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A BSF officer assigned to the Handwara neighbourhood of the Kupwara district was detained by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) a year ago on suspicion of transnational narcotics smuggling associated with the terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Romesh Kumar, a BSF sub-inspector, had cash valued at 91 lakh rupees that the NIA had also retrieved. The money came from the sale of illegal drugs.
A FIR was also filed by Jammu and Kashmir’s counter-intelligence Kashmir (CIK) against four security force members for allegedly participating in narcotics trafficking.
