Scourge of drug trafficking : Damn ethics of earning
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 23 2018 -
Make quick money. Get rich. Slowly strangulate society, particularly the young and vulnerable to death.
Ethics of earning money be damned.
This is the mantra of all drug lords and this becomes all that more dangerous when drug is smuggled under the camouflage of being public leaders.
This is exactly the case with the ADC Chairman of Chandel district, who has been named as the prime accused in the seizure of a huge amount of drugs including Heroin and WY tablets pegged at a whopping cost of over Rs 27 crore.
Lhukhosei Zou is certainly not the first politician to be caught with his fingers in the pie and one has to just recall how a former Finance Minister of the State was arrested from a Guwahati hotel along with a huge quantity of drugs many years back.
The Sangai Express does not know what has happened to the case, but the arrest with such a huge amount of drugs certainly spelt the end to the political career of the former Finance Minister.
Other than politicians, there have been high profile cases of top guns of the Government caught while transporting drugs and the memory of how an Army officer was nabbed along with a huge quantity of drugs at Pallel some years back must still be fresh in the minds of the people.
Also another high profile case was the detection of a huge amount of drugs from Imphal airport some years back but there is a big difference in this case as it has not been officially established who was or were behind the trafficking of the particular consignment.
More recently there was the case of a former police officer being rounded up for his alleged involvement in the drug racket.
The common thread running in all these cases, is the point that those involved are all high profile personalities and not just some run of the mill criminals who are out to make a quick buck.
This is what is worrying. Big shots found with their fingers in drug smuggling.
And this is only about who were ‘unfortunate’ enough to have been caught.
Gives more room to suspect that there must be other big fishes who are all involved in the drug racket.
As with organised crime, the arrested ADC Chairman may be part of a bigger circle for he obviously cannot operate alone.
Who dropped or delivered such a huge consignment of drugs to him ?
Or were the drugs smuggled in batches and delivered to him ? Where were the drugs headed to ?
Who would buy the drugs from him to be later dispersed to the small time pushers ?
The police have got a big fish in their net and now is the time to get down to the business of uncovering everyone involved in the drug racket.
That would serve the real purpose of the high profile arrest of the ADC Chairman, a post which enjoys the status of a Cabinet Minister.
Other than the high profile cases, news of drugs being seized along the Imphal-Moreh highway by different security agencies, particularly the Assam Rifles have been making it to the pages of the newspapers frequently.
Even on the day that the said ADC Chairman was remanded to police custody, came the news that Assam Rifles personnel had managed to seize a huge quantity of drugs worth about Rs 7 crore from a jungle tract near Khudengthabi.
Political will is the need of the hour to crack down on all the drug lords.
The question is whether the BJP led Government has it in them to crack down on the drug cartel or not.
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