At least 100 students of nearly 20 reputed schools in the capital —mostly from affluent families — and hundreds of students from well-known colleges were identified as customers of the narcotic drug racket busted by the Prohibition and Excise (P&E) department recently.
Taken aback by the large number of school-going students getting sucked into drug dragnet, the investigators have decided to set them right while cracking the whip on the drug suppliers. On Tuesday, the P&E officials arrested four more persons working with different companies on the charge of supplying narcotic drugs.
“The quartet is connected to the three accused arrested earlier. Hunt is on for the kingpin who is moving in a northern State,” P&E Director Akun Sabharwal said. He had sent text messages through WhatsApp to the principals and managements of the schools, giving details of their students who fell prey to drugs. The authorities, however, will not make the names public given the sensitivity of the issue but will inform the parents of the students concerned. The school and college managements were asked to speak to the students but, while doing so, maintain secrecy apart from taking measures to arrest the spread of the drug menace. More than accepting the truth, a few institutions were said to have skirted the responsibility arguing that they could not be blamed for what their students do outside the school premises. “The attitude is disturbing,” an official said.
However, teachers can notice the behavioural changes in the students addicted to drugs over a period of time, says counselling psychologist C. Veerender. “Teachers could easily identify students who regularly bunk classes, have lost focus on studies and with errant behaviour,” he said, adding that students use drugs initially for thrill, as an adventure and for identity and recognition among peers.
Efforts to reach out to the managements of schools and colleges whose students were found to be using drugs did not yield much results as most of them refused to acknowledge that they received information from the excise officials. Those who accepted, however, said they were shocked. The schools whose students were in the net are more in the up-scale category apart from a couple of those preferred by the middle-class segment as well.
The colleges, however, had a fair share from engineering, business management and degree colleges sought-after by the affluent.
