Engineering students are a class apart. They are expected to be brainy or eccentric or both. It is assumed that they all love rock music and would love to experiment with almost anything. Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Five Point Someone’ gives a fairly graphic insight into life in an engineering college. The movie based on the book was equally insightful even though it did not touch the darker side. Yesterday morning the State was treated to something it always suspected “ drug use in Goa’s premier engineering college. A raid jointly conducted by the Crime Branch and the Anti Narcotics Cell at the college hostel resulted in the seizure of marijuana and the arrest of two students who will, in all probability, face criminal proceedings and a possible jail term of six months because the quantities seized were not commercial in nature. What this effectively means is that the accused were users and not suppliers.
We are used to reading stories of rave parties on the beach and the connection between drugs and tourism. We have also become a little thick-skinned and therefore less reactive to reports of drug gangs and turf battles. The last big episode to rock the State was when a group of Nigerians created a law and order situation near O Coqueiro junction in Porvorim in 2013, to protest against the murder of their colleague who was allegedly hacked down by a rival drug gang. There have also been reports of certain pharmacies liberally stocking and selling drugs known to give users a ‘high’. Some years back the jilted girlfriend of a drug dealer exposed the nexus between narcotics, police and politicians. The mysterious death of Scarlet Keeling was also linked to narcotics and there have been numerous cases of tourists overdosing on drugs.
Goa has seen a lot in the last three decades. And the raid on a college hostel in Farmagudi is another dimension of a sordid story which has been told and re-told over the years. How drug dealers infiltrated the college is not yet known, but truth is they have infiltrated several education institutions and this was a rare case in which students collaborated with the police to expose the racket. The Crime Branch and Anti Narcotics Cell needs a pat on the back for being able to link up with concerned students who took the risk of exposing the hostel’s underbelly. One hopes these brave students are given sufficient protection. Institutions would prefer to keep incidents of this kind under wraps so as to protect the reputation of the college but in this case the principal has promised a thorough probe and a new set of rules to restrict entry into the institution.
If drug gangs continue to function it is because a market for these banned substances exist, and it is growing in Goa, India and other parts of the world. The revenue generated by this illegal trade is astronomical and for law enforcing agencies it is like battling the many-headed mythical Greek monster, Hydra. Cut of one head and two more grow in its place. The raid on the engineering college will send a shiver down the necks of students who indulge in these acts. Drug traders have established themselves along the beach belt, but educational institutions is where the State needs to draw the line. It cannot allow institutions to be contaminated by this nefarious trade and sterner action and round-the-clock monitoring is required to keep the growth of drug rings in check.
