Youths are falling prey to consumption of narcotic drugs, which is rampant in the Steel City these days. Anti-narcotic officials have noticed a recent surge in the number of youngsters visiting hot-beds of party drugs.
Officials attribute the boom in the drug culture to the pumping in of money from the Gulf countries as well as to the boom in the realty sector.
A 19-year-old youth was stabbed to death in Govindpur on Sunday afternoon and on Sunday evening a group clash took place at Azadnagar in Mango in which in two youths sustained stab injuries. These two incidents are glaring examples as to how drug addicts are having a free run in the Steel City.
The 19-year-old youth Vicky Sharma was drug addict and this has come out in the initial probe of the Govindpur Police. OC, Govindpur Police station, Rajesh Ranjan said that there were more than one assailant involved in the incident. He said some youths tried to snatch mobile phone from Vicky and when he registered a case, one of them stabbed him, causing fatal injury in the abdomen.
The OC said that they have found out that there are several individuals and even splinter gangs of youngsters who snatch valuables, including gold-chain and cellphone in the slums in Govindpur and adjoining Parsudih. He said they mainly target drug addicts in the area.
In another incident, a 22-year-old youth, Mohammed Salman wanted cough syrup which is also used for getting intoxicated by drug addicts from a medical store at Azadnagar in Mango on Sunday evening. When the drug-store owner, Md Naushad denied Salman the drug, he later returned to the medical shop with two of his friends. The trio ransacked the medical store and took out the drug which they were looking for and they all thrashed the store owner.
In response, Naushad called a group of youths and attacked the houses of Salman and his two friends in Azadnagar around 11 pm, resulting in half-a-dozen youths to sustain injuries. While, four of them were admitted at MGM Medical College Hospital, two others, identified as Md Hufaiza and Sahid Akhtar have been admitted at the Tata Main Hospital. The two had sustained stabbing injuries.
A police officer spoke of a multi-pronged strategy, targeting both the demand and supply sides of the drug traffic. This would involve cultivating sources among the student community and tracing the drug trafficking networks, located mostly in the State. “There has been a drastic change in the pattern of consumption from natural psychotropic substances to chemical compounds as is evident from recent cases,” he noted.