Chandigarh: In its renewed battle against drug trafficking, the Punjab police has for the first time invoked a 36-year-old law to preventively detain alleged drug smugglers in jail for up to two years.
Though in existence since 1988, the Prevention of Illicit Trafficking in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PIT-NDPS) Act was invoked for the first time by the anti-narcotics task force (ANTF) of the Punjab Police a few months ago against 17 alleged drug lords.
The idea was to detain drug traffickers who have multiple cases registered against them under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act but were out on bail, to prevent them from carrying out further smuggling activities, according to ANTF officials.
Under section 3 of the act, traffickers can be taken into custody and sent to any jail in India—if there is approval from the Union home minister—or to a jail in the state if detention orders are passed by the state home department. The detention lasts for at least three months and is extendable for up to two years.
Identities of 14 of the alleged drug lords on the list will be kept a secret till detention orders are passed, said an ANTF official who did not wish to be named.
However, three others on the list have already been detained.
India’s premier anti-narcotics agency, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), invoked the PITNDPS Act against Punjab-based drug lord Balwinder Singh, alias Billa Havellian. It procured an order to detain him at Dibrugarh in Assam. Incidentally, it is the same jail where radical preacher Amritpal Singh, detained under the National Security Act, is lodged.
The development marked “a significant step towards breaking the jail-based drug mafia link in the region”, the NCB said in a post on X.
In a first-of-its-kind operation in Punjab initiated by NCB , the notorious drug lord Balwinder Singh@ Billa Havellian has been ordered to be detained under the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PITNDPS) Act. He will be held in… pic.twitter.com/HPXyGi23w2
— NCB INDIA (@narcoticsbureau) August 13, 2024
A few days later, the NCB was able to procure detention orders for two other drug traffickers, Akshay Chhabra and Jaspal Singh, alias Goldy, also to be sent to Dibrugarh.
NCB said both detainees, despite being jailed in another case registered by the agency, had continued their illegal activities for which three additional First Information Reports (FIRs) were filed under the NDPS Act against Chhabra and one against Jaspal Singh.
These three detentions by the NCB were part of the 17 drug traffickers that the ANTF had proposed to the state home department. However, the list was sent back to the task force with the department asking for more information. The NCB then obtained detention orders for Goldy, Chhabra and Billa Havellian from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
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What is PIT-NDPS Act
The PIT-NDPS Act was passed three years after the enactment of the NDPS Act (1985). It allows the empowered agency to issue preventive detention orders to prevent any person from engaging in illicit traffic of narcotics and psychotropic substances.
Procedurally, the PIT-NDPS Act is akin to the National Security Act (NSA) where an agency empowered by the act sends a proposal for the detention of a person to the state home department or the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), who then pass the orders.
The agency sending the proposals is called the sponsoring agency, while the body that issues the detention order is called the detaining authority under the act. The detaining authority, in the case of the Centre, cannot be an officer below the rank of a joint secretary, while in the case of the state, it cannot be an officer below the rank of a secretary.
The agency proposing the detention does not have to show the recovery of actual drugs from the person being detained.
Apart from habitual or organised traffickers, financiers, and their agents who participate in drug smuggling behind the scenes can also be detained under the Act, besides opium cultivators who indulge in embezzlement of cultivated opium. The Act also empowers the investigating agency to conduct a financial probe against the detained individual.
Once the detention orders are passed, the individual is taken into custody and sent to jail either in the state, if the detention order is passed by the state home department, or any jail in India, if the same is passed by the Union home ministry.
The detainee can then appeal against the order within three months to an advisory board constituted under the act. The board is generally headed by a former judge who either confirms the detention offer or rejects it.
In Punjab, the board, headed by Justice (Retd) Shabihul Hasnain was constituted in January last year but is yet to receive any cases so far. Advocate Divanshu Jain, who is a member of the board, told The Print that despite the menace of drug trafficking in Punjab, the state government has been slow in making use of the act.
The PIT-NDPS advisory board in Haryana, on the other hand, has confirmed detentions in many cases. Constituted in August 2023, the board has confirmed the detention of almost 40 drug traffickers in Haryana jails to date. “More cases are under consideration of the board,” advocate Pawan Girdhar, a member of the board, told ThePrint.
Himachal Pradesh notified the advisory board under the act in April 2023 and has detained three individuals, as of last week. Proceedings are on for the detention of another 13 alleged drug traffickers, CM Sukhwinder Sukhu said in the state assembly last week.
Why Punjab is lagging
Sources in the Punjab ANTF told ThePrint that at least 17 cases, including those of the 14 shortlisted drug lords, had been sent to the home department for consideration a few months ago, but the proposals were returned and additional information was sought.
“Detaining a person involves several issues including those of personal liberty. Therefore, a detention case which has to be made out against these traffickers has to be a water-tight, solid case so that it can stand up to any legal challenge. We had received some proposals for the passing of detention orders from the police but we have sought more information and sent these back,” Punjab Home Secretary Gurkirat Kirpal Singh told ThePrint.
Of the 17 cases sent back by the state home department, three were forwarded by the state anti-narcotics task force on behalf of the NCB.
“However, when these were returned by the home department, the NCB forwarded these to the Union home ministry and got a detention order from the Centre. A detention order from the Centre allows the NCB to press for the detenue to be sent to any jail in India. In these cases the detenues were sent to Dibrugarh in Assam,” said a senior ANTF officer.
The officer added that the agency was also considering sending the 14 cases to the Union home ministry.
“Our experience in Punjab has been that even when the smugglers are arrested and put in jails they continue to carry on their activities from inside jails. With great effort, the anti-narcotics task force managed to shift several such drug smugglers lodged in various jails across Punjab into the high-security jail at Bathinda so that the possibility of their continuing with their nefarious activities is reduced. It should be ideal if we are able to send some of these to jails outside Punjab,” added the officer.
The NCB as well as most state governments have only started using the PIT-NDPS Act in the last few years, according to the latest annual report of the NCB. The report, published earlier this year, added that 88 cases were proposed by NCB between 2020-2023 under the act, while the number of cases proposed by the states during the same period was 1,837.
When asked why state governments had suddenly started using the act which was rarely invoked earlier, the ANTF officer quoted above said that increased use of modern technology combined with huge stakes involved in terms of crores of drug money was forcing state governments to take more stringent action on drug lords.
“Apart from the increased use of the PIT-NDPS Act, in more and more cases we are attaching the property of the accused as a routine exercise, something which was really done earlier,” said the officer.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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