KARACHI: Govt urged to set up special narcotics courts
KARACHI, Oct 10: The government has been approached to set up special courts for speedy trial of drug cases in each district of the country to convict drug sellers and smugglers, Brig Saleem Akhund, Director-General of the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), Sindh, said here on Wednesday.
Speaking at a seminar on combating narcotics, which was organized by Pakistan Press Centre, he said the decision had been taken by the federal government in 1999, but due to financial constraints only five courts could be established throughout the country.
Brig Akhund said during one year of its establishment, the special court in Karachi had disposed of over 200 cases of all the agencies, including 60 cases of the ANF. Out of the 60 cases, 59 ended in conviction, he said, claiming that the conviction rate of the ANF in Karachi court was far better than that of other agencies.
He said 286 ANF cases were pending in the court, which was burdened with 900 cases of other agencies.
“So far we have obtained three life imprisonment, two RI up to 14 years, eight up to 10 years and 46 imprisonment up to five years for the drug pushers and smugglers,” he added.
When asked about the death sentence, Brig Akhund said that ten persons had been sentenced to death so far in Pakistan, however, no execution had been carried out.
Pakistan, he said, had been declared as a drug-free zone by the world, because there was no poppy cultivation or drug processing units in the country. “However, since a neighbouring country is deeply involved in it, Pakistan has become a transit country for narcotic trade,” he added.
As regards awareness side, the ANF had arranged speech declamations, painting competitions in schools, colleges to raise awareness against drug menace. “Our anxiety being that about 43 per cent of the addicts got introduced to drugs in between the age of 14 and 25 years,” he observed.
According to the national survey on drug abuse, there were four million chronic drug users in Pakistan, rising at a rate of nearly seven per cent annually. Almost 1.5 million people or half the total number of drug users were addicted to heroin, 0.9 per cent to hashish/charas.
About 97.2 per cent of drug addicts were male with just over half of them married. Even though women constitute less than three per cent of the total, their suffering as wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of drug users was by no means reduced.
Brig Akhund said the ANF had also seized properties worth more than Rs2300 million of drug peddlers, during operations against them.
In order to tackle the serious drug abuse problem in the country, a five-year master plan for drug abuse control (1998-2003) had been formulated to address major issues in this regard. The cabinet approved a master plan with a total cost of Rs2.832 billion. This amount was to be contributed by the federal, provincial governments as well as the donor agencies like the UNDCP, he said.
Brig Akhund said the ANF was also in touch with the provincial ministry of health to improve the effectiveness of drug treatment and rehabilitation centres already established in the government hospitals in Sindh.
The government of Pakistan had decided to take major policy decisions backed by stringent measures to tackle the drug problems in the country. In early 1995, the Control of Narcotics Substances Ordinance was promulgated to serve as the basic law curbing illicit drug production, trafficking, abuse and money laundering. This ordinance was enacted into law in 1997, he said.
Another major initiative was the creation of the ANF by merging the Pakistan Narcotics Control Board and the Anti- Narcotics Task Force.
Several plans against the drugs smugglers and addicts have been initiated and implemented in collaboration with the donor agencies.
During the programme, he said, the main focus of the ANF has been to eradicate all poppy crops by the year 2002. —PPI
