With no end in sight to the unhindered flow of drugs, the Ernakulam Rural police have decided to attach the moveable and immoveable properties of those arrested in cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act as an effective deterrent to the fight the menace.
The police are in the process of drawing up a list of the accused against whom relevant sections of the NDPS Act that empowers attachment of properties would be invoked.
Measures
To begin with, steps have been initiated to attach the properties of three persons.
“We will adapt attachment of properties as a larger ploy to get at the source of the drugs rather than stop with mere peddlers and middlemen. Income earned through the sale and smuggling of drugs is illegal and should hence be confiscated,” said K. Karthik, District Police Chief (Ernakulam Rural).
Section 68 A to Z of the NDPS Act provides the conditions under which properties could be attached.
In fact, the Excise Department has been invoking these provisions for more than a decade now.
“We have been doing this in cases in which the volume of drugs involved qualifies as commercial quantities. In such cases, the moveable and immoveable properties of the accused and his close associates dating back to six years from the date of arrest could be attached or frozen,” said B. Suresh, Assistant Excise Commissioner, Ernakulam.
Unlike the Code of Criminal Procedure and the IPC, the NDPS Act empowers the investigation officer to act directly and initiate measures to attach properties.
The city police have also cranked up its crackdown on drug networks aided by technology-driven intelligence gathering.
A mobile application has been developed and is set to be launched very shortly as part of efforts to beef up manual and technology-driven intelligence gathering at multiple levels. The app will be made available over multiple mobile operating platforms, and people can pass on information while remaining anonymous all along.
The information will land at the control room at the Commissionerate. Besides, plans are also afoot to introduce a WhatsApp number for the public to pass alerts in this regard, which again will be designed to maintain confidentiality of the informer.
This was in addition to a 93-member dedicated team formed for enforcement related to cases registered under the NDPS Act. Besides, a 21-member team led by a sub inspector has been set up at the Commissionerate.
