CHITRAL: Elders of Ayun town and adjoining villages here on Friday assured police of support and help for a crackdown on drug peddlers.

They also accepted the police’s proposal for the “social boycott” of drug pushers and said the people won’t help those criminals secure release on bail from courts.

The development came during a jirga held in the area in connection with a mass awareness campaign against narcotics.

The participants included notables from the area, including elected members of local bodies.

Noted among them were village council chairmen Wajeehuddin and Rehman Khan and Hafiz Khosh Wali Khan, Maulana Naeem, Inayatullah Aseer, Rehmat Ellahi and Khairul Azam that residents were committed to helping authorities free the area from narcotics.

They said the illegal drug trade had caused several problems in society.

Sub-divisional police officer Hasanullah, who was also in attendance, said drug pushers were the real enemy of society for playing with the health and life of people, especially youth.

He said it was not possible for law-enforcement agencies to eliminate narcotics from the area without the support and cooperation of the people.

“Social boycott of drug pushers is an effective answer to this menace,” he said. Mr Hasanullah said the police had arrested almost all drug peddlers in the area with the active support of the people.

“More public cooperation is requested to make ours a drug-free area,” he said.

Corruption alleged : The residents of Ashrait village of Lower Chitral have alleged a large-scale corruption of Rs300 million in the disbursement of forest royalty of Ashrait forest’s first 10 compartments against former officials including two deputy commissioners, an assistant commissioner and an accountant.

Addressing a press conference here the other day, Mir Azam advocate, Khosh Din, Khosh Zaman, Mumtaz Hussain, Gul Amin, Mohammad Umar and others said that the former officers had illegally disbursed the amount to one Khaista Rehman and his accomplices Said Ahmed, Sajjad Ahmed and Ghayasuddin during 2020-21 despite a stay order by a court.

They alleged that the officers had crossed all the limits of anomaly and corruption in the disbursement as they issued the large amount to the individuals without authority letter from the royalty holders.

They said the major beneficiary of the illegal disbursement, Khaista Rehman, gratified only 30 handpicked persons and ignored hundreds of families having legal share in the royalty amount.

The village elites said that all the former officers should be behind bars due to the blatant violation of disbursement rules, which had deprived hundreds of poor families of Ashrait, who waited for decades for the royalty as they had no other source of income.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2023