KOHAT: District police officer Mansoor Aman has ordered the subordinate officials to book the drug smugglers under the newly-introduced section D in the Control of Narcotics Substance Act, 1997, which denied them bail and case hearings at the lower courts.

He issued the directives during a briefing by officials about the campaign against drug traffickers here on Sunday.

The officials said that 44 drug peddlers had been arrested, including three ice dealers, with most of them having been booked under the section D.

The district police chief was told that strict checking had been started on the drug smuggling routes from the tribal areas and the Indus Highway connecting the Khyber tribal district to Kohat and southern districts. He was informed that most of drugs came from the adjoining Orakzai and Khyber districts.

The DPO lamented that the drug peddlers were released by courts on payment of nominal fine or a month of imprisonment, and they again began active. He said keeping in view the gravity of the problem the Supreme Court had included section D in the Control of Narcotics Act, 1997, three months back. Now, no lower court can give bail to the peddlers, whose cases will now be heard at the high court and apex court levels, he explained. The drug peddlers would now have to undergo a minimum of one year imprisonment if they were proven guilty, he added.

LAWYERS NOT TO PURSUE CASE: The lawyers’ community and the civil society have said that no member of the legal fraternity or the civil society would pursue the case of the killers of seven-year-old Nowshera girl.

Saleem Altaf, the president of Karwan-i-Ammal, and also a member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Commission on the Status of Women, offered a panel of lawyers to purse her case free of cost.

He said the civil society and lawyers of Kohat had expressed their grief and sorrow over the gruesome incident.

Mr Altaf said the lawyers and the civil society members went to the house of the victim and met with the aggrieved family members.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2020