Srinagar: To stop smuggling of drugs from Pakistan and their use in terror activities in Kashmir, 26 Border Police Posts are coming up around the Line of Control (LoC) in three frontier districts of Kupwara, Baramulla, and Bandipora.
Besides keeping a tab on narcotics, the posts would be used for outreach at border towns of these three districts and deal with infiltration from Pakistan in close synergy with the Army and other security forces deployed along the LoC.
These Border Police Posts are coming up after the approval of the Ministry of Home Affairs and their establishment has already started.
These Border Police Posts would have a strength of over 20 Police personnel and would be headed by a Sub-Inspector.
“Besides countering nacro-smuggling that later gets used in terror activities in Kashmir, these posts will focus on intelligence gathering and infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan,” a senior MHA official said.
The construction cost approved for each Police Post is Rs 84 lakh and land for each post has been earmarked.
The posts are coming up in Machil, Gurez, Keran, Tangdhar, upper reaches of Police Division Handwara, Uri, and other sectors of north Kashmir.
The official said that the strengthened security grid and increased coordination among various security agencies has effectively lowered the scale of terrorism activities.
“However, curbing the drug menace is difficult, as Pakistan has now resorted to infiltrating large amounts of narcotics in J&K,” MHA official said, adding that establishment of Border Police Posts was part of the same exercise.
The official said that though narco-terrorism was one of the challenges, the men deployed over these posts would keep a vigil on transportation of fake currency and dropping of weapons through drones.
Pertinently, so far, there has been no incident of dropping of weapons through drones in Kashmir.
However, there have been instances when weapons and currency were dropped though drones in the Jammu division.
Recently, Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh had dubbed “Pakistan-sponsored narco-terrorism” as “the biggest challenge”.
He had said that over a dozen incidents of weapons droppings by Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) with the use of drones had taken place.
“RDX was used in an IED, which was recovered. It was to be carried and dropped by a drone,” he had said.
Describing drones as a major security threat, the DGP had said that the use of drones by anti-national elements and terrorists to drop weapons and IEDs was a threat and that they are taking counter steps to defeat their designs.
A senior Police officer said that of late Pakistan had used a dual strategy of sending drugs as well as weapons to keep terror alive.
“Heroin smuggled from Pakistan is the most widely used opioid all over Kashmir. The cross-border smuggling of narcotics provides oxygen to terrorism via finances and it is ruining the lives of the youth,” the officers said, adding that the finances generated from drugs were being used to fund terror.
Last year in June, a narco-terror module busted in the Baramulla district resulted in the arrests of 10 persons possessing heroin worth Rs 45 crore along with Chinese grenades and four pistols.
Police said that this terror module was operating in the entire J&K as well as outside the union territory.
