PANAJI: The Goa Police will focus on ensuring that those arrested in drug related cases are convicted, Deputy Inspector General of Police Vimal Anand Gupta said even as he added that the drug trade is a global systemic behemoth that cannot be tackled by one police force working in isolation.
"In the present context, our effort was to deal with this problem in a holistic way. It means the effort is not only to identify clandestine centres selling drugs but also to arrest the people indulging in drug trade and take due precaution for effective prosecution and their conviction in the court," Gupta told media persons after the conclusion of a workshop for police officers on ensuring that police officers complete legal procedures right from the time they receive the intelligence to securing a conviction.
"There have been instances where the accused got acquittals in the court and keeping in view the whole scenario we thought of training our officers not only in the art of collecting intelligence about the mandatory legal provisions to be followed while conducting the raid," Gupta said adding that his police officers from the level of PSI and above were treated to a lowdown on intelligence, raids, arrests, prosecution including the latest trends in the industry.
"At all the stages the legal formalities are involved. Even if there is a minor shred of doubt the tendency is to give benefit of doubt to the accused," he added.
To a question on why the Goa Police have only succeeded in attacking the street level operators, the DIG informed that to break the networks and catch the main suppliers and controllers of the trade one needed "real time intelligence"
"To catch them (suppliers and big shots) you need real time intelligence, you need the right information at the right time. People are not coming forward with that kind of information," Gupta told reporters.
He called on a pan India network to defeat the international drug system and that kind of coordination that would be needed to defeat the system.
"The system has its own system of self preservation, has its own system of communication linkages, passing on the information, to face the crisis, so all this features are there in this system which has got into shape somehow," Gupta said.
"The system operates at an international level your street is connected with the international market ultimately. If you go back and follow the trail, you will find it is connected to some mafia somewhere in some other country. So technically, international trade, traffickers are involved, national level traffickers state level traffickers are involved, street level traffickers are involved and they have their own system of concealment passing on information, fighting with the crisis. We as an agency fight individually. We the Goa Police, are conducting raids but we are not able to penetrate the whole system. For this we need coordination at the pan-nation level," Gupta said. He was asked about the limited effectiveness of the Goa Police efforts to crackdown on the drug mafia.
"But we are fighting it as a state police. So perhaps there is a need to have more coordination, more cooperation among the agencies. More agencies having pan India jurisdiction like NCB so that collectively with full energy we break that system," Gupta added.
"Right now we have not come to a state where we can break that system. We can put a temporary crisis in that system, by special drives and raids by convicting them. But the system is much more stronger," he said.
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NEED OF HOUR - REAL
TIME INTELLIGENCE
* DIG says real time intelligence is needed to break networks and catch the main suppliers and controllers of the trade * Right information at the right time is needed. People are not coming forward with that kind of information, he says
* He suggests pan India network to defeat global drug ring as Goa Police is not able to penetrate the whole system
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Effort is not only to arrest the people indulging in drugs but also to take due precaution for effective prosecution and their conviction in the court
- Vimal Anand Gupta, DIG
