Pakistan-based smugglers are devising new ways to spread their network to smuggle narcotics in India through the Punjab border. Quoting highly placed sources in BSF, Punjab Frontier, our correspondent reports that Pakistani smugglers are preferring fresh faces with no prior smuggling record to escape legal scrutiny. They are also asking their Indian counterparts to recruit minors as couriers so that if arrested, they should not be put in prisons because of being juveniles.
Meanwhile, the Border Security Force, in an intensifying crackdown, has nabbed over 203 Indian drug smugglers and 16 Pakistani nationals during this year till today, mainly from the high-risk border districts of Amritsar, Tarn Tarana and Ferozepur in Punjab. Three Pakistani intruders have also been neutralised by the BSF.
The Force is countering the increasing use of drones and GPS-based delivery methods of Pakistani smugglers to evade detection by ramping up ground and aerial surveillance. It has deployed anti-drone systems, motion sensors and night vision devices and has seized 200 Pak drones along with 287 kgs of heroin, 13 kgs of ICE drug, 174 weapons, including AK-47s, 12 hand grenades and over 10 kgs of high explosives these drones have carried inside the Indian territory.
BSF spokesperson, Deputy Inspector General, AK Vidyarthi, said that voluntary help by some villagers and joint operations with the Punjab Police and other central agencies are proving fruitful in tracing the local conduits of transnational drug cartels.
