PESHAWAR, Nov 2: The Anti-Narcotics Force got drug barons’ assets worth $100 million frozen during the last one year as part of its campaign to curb drug smuggling, ANF’s Director-General Maj-Gen Ghazanfar Abbas said here on Friday.

Besides, the ANF managed to get awarded capital punishment to four drug barons, life imprisonment to 35 peddlers and 400 accused were convicted by the courts of law, said the DG ANF while speaking at a ceremony held here on Friday.

The DG ANF was in Peshawar to attend a ceremony held prior to setting ablaze 12 tons of contraband including 385kg heroin and a big quantity of charas.

The contraband were set on fire at a ground near Kacha Gharri refugee camp. The NWFP Governor, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, ANF regional director Brig Inamul Haq and the representatives of United Nations Drug Control Programme also attended the ceremony.

In his address Maj-Gen Ghazanfar Abbas said that the ANF would destroy 20 tons of contraband in Quetta on Nov 15. He claimed that the government had succeeded in bringing poppy cultivation to zero level and there was no heroin manufacturing laboratory on Pakistan territory.

At present, he said, drug dealers still transported contraband via Pakistan and the government was determined to stop the flow of drug smuggling. He said there were around 3.5 million drug addicts in Pakistan, adding that Afghan refugees were also involved in the menace of drug trafficking.

Speaking on the occasion, Governor Iftikhar Hussain Shah said that after relentless efforts the government had eradicated poppy cultivation. He said that drug abuse had assumed an international phenomenon, which transcended all bearers and frontiers. He said the dimension of this menace had grown in alarming proportion and had become a serious threat to all societies in the world.

Brig Inamul Haq said that 300 people had been arrested during the last one year in drug-related offences in the province. He said that the ANF had registered 231 cases against drug paddlers in the province, while 135 cases were decided in the court during previous year. Besides, he said the ANF handed over 427kg opium to a pharmaceutical company to be used in medicine manufacturing.