HARIPUR: Police have registered criminal cases against nine farmers for cultivating banned poppy crop in the remote Nara Amazai union council of Ghazi tehsil, according to District Police Officer Kashif Aftab Abbasi.

He told this scribe that after receiving reports that some farmers defied the ban and cultivated the poppy crop in some hilly areas of Nara Amazai and Bait Gali, a police party visited different villages and found poppy grown over an area of about 11 kanals.

He said police registered criminal cases against nine farmers of Banda Ghulam Rasool village identified as Jamshed, Ghulam Khan, Amir Ahmed, Ajoor Khan, Banaras Khan, Arif Khan, Munir Ahmed, Sartaj Khan and Sifarish Khan for growing poppy.

The DPO said that police destroyed the crop and arrested one of the nine growers while others managed to escape. He said that police would soon visit the area again for destroying poppy crop if there was any.

He said that the local farmers were earlier warned of legal action for growing the banned crop. He added that the farmers were told destroy

SUICIDE: A married man committed suicide over some domestic dispute in the limits of Hattar police station.

Police quoted family sources as saying that Faizan, 23, of village Gulu Bani went to his bedroom after an altercation with his wife over some unknown family matter.

They said that he locked the bedroom from inside and shot himself in his temple.

The family members broke into his room and found him critically injured. He was shifted to trauma centre where the doctors pronounced him dead.

Police have registered case and started an investigation into the case.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2022