In an effort to curb drug menace in schools and colleges of Telangana, officials of the Anti-narcotics Bureau in a meeting with Chief Minister Revanth Reddy decided to deploy a retired police officer in every school. The former police officials will help identify the suppliers and keep a check on students, starting from the ones where the consumption is higher.
The State had launched Anti-Drug Committees (ADCs) comprising of teaching and non-teaching staff, parents, counsellors, and students in every college, university, and recently schools to keep a check on the abuse of narcotic substances. There are over 3,000 ADCs in the State and as many as 3,116 students were enrolled as anti-drug soldiers, still no cases from schools and educational institutes have been reported.
“Despite having these committees, most of the drug abuse in schools is not being reported. This is the case even in the top schools of the city which charge exorbitant fees from the students and do not want to co-operate with the police fearing their reputation would go down,” said Sandeep Shandilya, Director of Telangana Anti-Narcotics Bureau adding that most of the ADCs are now defunct.
“When this issue was brought up in a recent meeting with the CM, it was decided that a retired police official will be deployed in every school to track and nab the supplier network while also identifying children who have already become addicts for counselling,” the official added.
The department has deployed human and technical intelligence to trace and identify the network of suppliers and consumers frequenting various pubs which are centres of drug deals. Interestingly, many of these have identified as students from the top universities of the city. The success rate (or certainty) of identifying drug users has increased to 80%.
Scrolling through a record of 27 visitors of a premium pub located in Gachibowli, the official said, “their patterns and transactions are being closely monitored and supplier network is being established from their dealings for a larger operation.” So far, of the 40,000 cocaine users in the State, the department has already fully identified 2,000 addicts, while close to 300 ‘contacts’ have been identified, potential suppliers to students at a top institute in the state.
