The Shimla police have frozen assets worth Rs 1.13 crore of drug traffickers in two cases registered in the district. Additional SP, Shimla, Abhishek Dhiman, while addressing a press conference on Wednesday, said that the action was taken after financial investigations by the police in the two cases. He said that in the first case registered on April 10, the district police had arrested three Nepalese, namely N Bahadur, Mohan Shahi and Chakra Bahadur, with 9 kg of opium from Narkanda. “During investigation, the police found Laxmi, who owned a tea shop at Kandaghat in Solan district, involved in drug trafficking and arrested her with around 2 kg of opium on April 13. A further investigation revealed that N Bahadur and Laxmi were involved in drug trafficking for a very long time. Both had been actively supplying opium to local youths, mainly in Kandaghat and Narkanda, through a well-organised network,” he added.
Dhiman said, “A financial investigation revealed that N Bahadur had purchased two vehicles through the drug money. The police had also recovered Rs 12 lakh in cash from him. Besides, Laxmi had purchased a Royal Enfield motorcycle with the drug money and deposited Rs 5 lakh in her saving bank account. Total assets worth Rs 53 lakh, which they had acquired with the ill-gotten drug money, had been frozen.”
The Additional SP said that in the second case, the police had frozen assets worth Rs 60 lakh of Aryan, who was involved in drug trafficking, mainly “chitta”. He added that the police had recently detained Aryan under the Prevention of Illicit Trafficking Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PIT-NDPS) Act for being a repeat drug trafficker. “During investigation, the police found that Aryan had acquired a property worth Rs 60 lakh with the drug money. He had purchased a vehicle and constructed a two-storey house in his village in Kotkhai with the drug money. It was also found that the accused was neither employed nor he owned any business,” he said.
Dhiman said that this was the highest number of property seizure done by the district police in the past three years.
