A Jammu and Kashmir court has rejected the bail application of five army personnel and four civilians allegedly running a cross-border drug-smuggling racket in Kupwara.
The development comes days after a top army commander in the region flagged concerns that Pakistan was using “narco-terrorism” as a new tool in its proxy war.
On Monday, Kupwara’s additional district and sessions judge rejected the bail of five army men and four civilians arrested recently, regretting that the “protectors of the society” had turned “perpetrators” in drug trafficking.
The police said the five army men posted in the 175 Engineering (Territorial Army) Wing based in Panzgam, Kupwara, were trafficking drugs coming from Pakistan through the Tangdhar sector. The court said their custody was necessary to arrest other members of the “gang”.
The accused troopers are Naib-Subedar Puran Singh, Sepoy Sushil Kumar, Naik Waseem Ahmad Mir, Naik Mohammad Shafiq Khan and Naik Anil Kumar. The four civilians are Mashkoor Sheikh, Mohammad Yousaf Kothari, Saleem Sheikh and Mohammad Imran Teli.
Mashkoor Sheikh used to work as a porter for the army. Jammu and Kashmir has been rocked by two back-to-back incidents of cross-border drug racket bust in the last few weeks involving the men in uniform.
While the five army men and four civilians were arrested in one case, 17 men, including five cops, were arrested in another — both in Kupwara district.
The police had recovered a cache of drugs from their possession. The police have launched a major drive against narcotics smuggling in the last one year in Kupwara by arresting 161 people in 85 cases. But the arrest of police and army personnel has caused embarrassment to the security establishment.
While denying bail, the Kupwara judge referred to judgments of the higher courts, which had said the youths in Jammu and Kashmir were put “on peril of destruction” by the menace of drugs.
The prosecution had objected to their bail and argued that the proceeds of the narcotics trade were being channelled into “terror funding activities”.
