Haryana: One WhatsApp message is all it takes. A dozen young men armed with laathis appear on the foggy streets of Jind’s Lochab village, led by Mukesh, the sarpanch. Minutes later, a suspect is surrounded. Pockets are emptied. Shawls are stripped. They are searching for chitta, weed, or lal pari.
In Lochab, vigilantes have declared war on drugs. Anyone entering the village is frisked and asked to show their Aadhaar card. Every night, Mukesh and his group patrol the streets with a singular mission: to catch drug peddlers and shame them publicly.
“When the administration is not stepping up, we have to take matters into our own hands,” said Mukesh, his vigilant eyes scanning his dimly lit phone screen.
Haryana is in the grip of a drug crisis, and villages like Lochab are seizing control. A growing tide of vigilantism has swept across the state, with makeshift groups, committees, and anti-drug ‘Nasha roko’ panchayats working to stem addiction.
This momentum is growing even as the state claims to be making progress. Over 40 per cent of Haryana’s villages have been declared ‘drug free,’ and Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has vowed, “Drugs will not be tolerated in Haryana.” Between January and November 2024, the Haryana State Narcotics Control Bureau (HSNCB) and district police registered 3,051 cases against drug peddlers, leading to 4,652 arrests.
For villagers, however, the problem is far from over. Desperation has shaped their solutions, but it’s also coloured with caste prejudice. Vigilantes frequently frame the drug trade along caste lines, with deep-seated biases determining who is labelled a peddler or consumer. Many families, meanwhile, are turning to alcohol to replace narcotics.
The spread of drugs in Haryana is attributed to districts bordering Punjab—Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Ambala, and Sirsa. Anti-drugs organisations working on the ground say an established network of transporters moves drugs from Punjab to Haryana, where local dealers further distribute them across villages and slum areas. While Punjab has seen a big increase in Pregabalin abuse, Haryana’s primary battle is with chitta (heroin), which has taken a deep hold on the local youth.
The heroin often comes directly from Punjab or is routed through Delhi before reaching Haryana.
“The drug problem in Haryana is multi-faceted. There is Punjab, caste, and unemployment,” said Renu Kadyan, president of the Bhagat Singh Foundation, which fights against drug abuse in the state. “Drug consumption is most rampant in villages where unemployment is high—whether due to a lack of opportunities or because people have sold everything to go abroad. These men often turn to drug peddling for money making or become consumers themselves.”
Drug peddlers were publicly shamed, with their photographs taken and circulated on WhatsApp with captions like “Wanted Drug Peddler”.
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Caste lines and drug wars
In Haryana’s villages, dominant caste drug sellers are often shielded, while Dalit consumers are blamed and shamed publicly.
At the sarpanch’s house in Ashrafgarh, members of the Bhagat Singh Yuva group had an impassioned discussion how to keep drugs out of their village. The group claims to have eliminated 80 per cent of the drug problem in Ashrafgarh, but they’re afraid that it could resurface and ravage the community again.
The blame, they say, lies with the “neechi jaati” (lower caste).
“Till the time these lower caste people are in the village, the drug problem won’t go away,” said committee member and the sarpanch’s wife, brushing her hair as she sat on a cot. Around her, five men perched on chairs nodded in agreement.
The group members insist their accusations are grounded in reality.
The upper caste men with huge land holdings who want to make easy money sell drugs and have the support of the entire village… Meanwhile, those from the lower castes… are maligned by the villagers and are also shamed publicly
-Rahul Kumar, anti-drug activist
“It’s not only unemployment but also the class and community they come from,” declared 46-year-old Satyavan Yadav, a committee member.
The Bhagat Singh Yuva group was cobbled together in November 2023 to tackle the drug problem that had taken hold of Ashrafgarh. Yadav recalled how dealers were selling drugs in broad daylight.
“Every street had one young man lying against a wall after inhaling heroin,” he said.
The village decided enough was enough. They installed 28 CCTV cameras, linked the footage to the group members’ smartphones, and organised night patrols. Panchayats were held and punishments were doled out—a fine of Rs 51,000 for selling drugs and Rs 5,100 for consuming them. During these panchayats, the Scheduled Caste Sansi community was singled out. Entire families were threatened with expulsion from the village if even one member was found consuming or selling drugs.
“Earlier, it was limited to ganja,” said Om Prakash Beniwal, another group member. “But these people from the lower caste got heroin into the village. We upper-caste people don’t engage in such activities.”
This narrative isn’t unique to Ashrafgarh. Across Haryana, Dalit men are frequently accused of spreading the drug menace.
An economic divide fuels this blame game, according to activist Rahul Kumar, who runs awareness campaigns in the villages of Karnal district.
It’s a set-up in which dominant caste drug sellers get a clean chit and marginalised consumers get maligned. While Kumar has been trying to sensitise people about separating drugs from caste, he noted that it’s deeply entrenched in the social fabric of the state.
“The upper caste men with huge land holdings who want to make easy money sell drugs and have the support of the entire village,” said Kumar, who also works in de-addiction centres. “Meanwhile, those from the lower castes, who are mostly labourers and lack employment opportunities, end up consuming these drugs. They are maligned by the villagers and are also shamed publicly.”
The practice of replacing drugs with alcohol is widespread across villages in Haryana.
Crackdowns and community confessions
When villagers in Manoharpur started noticing luxury cars—BMWs, Fortuners, and SUVs—lining up near the dried-up pond late at night, they knew something was wrong. The men in these cars weren’t there to admire the pastoral views but to buy chitta and weed from suppliers operating in the village.
As soon as sarpanch Preeti was alerted to the issue in 2023, she called a panchayat meeting and a team was formed to crack down on the suppliers. This was the first anti-drug vigilante group formed in Jind, according to villagers.
Soon, the local police were also informed by the sarpanch to cooperate with the vigilante group. And slogans like “Ek do, ek do, nashe ki latt ko chhod do” (One two, one two, kick this addiction to drugs) echoed through the streets.
“We went door to door to raise awareness about the drug problem,” said Preeti. “Restrictions were imposed on the roads leading into the village.”
The vigilante group forcibly sent drug users to Nasha Mukti Kendras (de-addiction centres). Drug peddlers were publicly shamed, with their photographs taken and circulated on WhatsApp with captions like “Wanted Drug Peddler”. After this only they were handed over to the police. Over the last two years, the group claims to have helped 48 young men overcome their addiction.
Manoharpur’s model inspired nearby villages such as Ashrafgarh and Lochab to adopt similar initiatives. But there was a loophole in the system—many peddlers were back on the streets the day after their arrest.
“For small quantities of drugs, the peddlers aren’t detained for long,” said Mukesh, the sarpanch of Lochab village. “Over time, they’ve realised they won’t be arrested for carrying 5-6 grams of chitta or weed. They’re just given a warning, held overnight, and released. This is why they avoid keeping large stashes.”
A senior Haryana police official acknowledged that prosecuting small-scale offenders is difficult. Small quantities of heroin (chitta), commonly sold in tiny foil packets called beed, make handling and sampling difficult due to the minuscule amounts involved.
“One gram of chitta is divided into 20 beeds. Drug addicts need heroin for immediate consumption. They open the foil, flatten it and ignite the substance to inhale the fumes,” said the official.
By law, two representative samples must be collected—one sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) and the other reserved for retesting if required by the court. With such small amounts, drawing a sample becomes difficult, the official added.
We have no jobs, no opportunities, no resources. Drugs at least gave us the illusion that everything is alright
-Amit, recovering drug addict from Manoharpur
This is why the police are focusing on intercepting drugs in transit, where large stashes—or ‘commercial quantities’—are most likely to be found.
“While they are moving, we try to intercept them. This way we can draw samples and file a strong case against them landing them in jail for years. Very few cases involve drugs being stored locally,” said the officer.
Most heroin supply flows into Delhi via routes originating in Punjab, passing through Haryana and sometimes Rajasthan.
“Criminals are opportunists,” the officer added. “We patrol one route, they find another.”
A report this year by the Quality Council of India (QCI), commissioned by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), showed a sharp rise in narcotics seizures in Haryana. From January to 30 November 2024, the state recorded 411 cases of commercial quantity drug seizures—a 40 per cent increase compared to 295 cases during the same period in 2023.
The highest seizures of commercial quantities were from Sirsa, Ambala, Kurukshetra, Gurugram, and Faridabad, according to the Haryana State Narcotics Control Bureau (HSNCB).
With 3,114 villages being declared drug-free in 2024, the police and administration are giving credit to their awareness campaigns and anti-drug programmes. These include the Namak-Lota Abhiyan, under which small-time peddlers and users publicly renounce drugs in front of village elders and panchayats.
Other than community interventions, a multi-pronged approach is used to combat drug trafficking, including preventive detention under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
“We can detain someone for up to one year under this provision,” said another SP-level officer. “We build a case under the P-NDPS Act to determine how many narcotics smugglers the individual is connected with. If substantial evidence is found, it becomes easier to file a case.”
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‘Choose alcohol over drugs’
Manish, a 28-year-old drug addict from Manoharpur, was sent to a Nasha Mukti Kendra by his sarpanch, Preeti, but it didn’t help. Despite three trips in the past year and regular counselling sessions, Manish would quit drugs for a few months only to relapse. That’s when his family replaced his drug habit with alcohol.
After his last return from the Nasha Mukti Kendra, they allowed him to consume alcohol under their supervision. Within a month or two, his obsession with drugs began to fade.
“The idea was to break his habit of drug consumption. He had grown weak. And that’s why we switched to alcohol. At least, it is less dangerous,” said his elder brother Ashish, a labourer.
The practice of replacing drugs with alcohol is widespread across villages in Haryana. For long-term drug addicts struggling to quit, alcohol is often introduced as a substitute to satisfy their craving for nasha.
However, psychiatrist Sankalp Kumar from Jind warns that this practice only substitutes one addiction for another.
“This approach is mostly seen in cases where patients don’t use heavy drugs. Alcohol is often perceived as an alternative that provides similar pleasure, but scientifically, it’s wrong,” he said.
Kumar added that the legal status of alcohol reinforces a false sense of legitimacy among recovering addicts.
“Alcohol is a legal drug. And sookha nasha is expensive, while alcohol is comparatively cheaper. But there’s a caveat—the amount of alcohol consumed tends to increase over time, leading to liver and kidney damage. This practice is sheer foolishness,” said Kumar, who works at government de-addiction centres.
But for Amit, another recovering addict from Manoharpur, alcohol has become his saviour. He rarely steps out of his house, but when he does, he goes around telling people to not consume drugs.
But he doesn’t seem entirely convinced himself.
“Is that enough? We have no jobs, no opportunities, no resources. Drugs at least gave us the illusion that everything is alright,” he said, coughing as his elder brother playfully slapped his head and laughed.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)