Punjab’s growing drug-gang menace

Author: Jagvinder Singh Virk

Extortion, gang violence and drug trafficking are eroding public confidence in Punjab’s security apparatus. Arrests alone cannot break the nexus; the State and Centre must work together to dismantle its finances, prosecute offenders swiftly and protect those who dare to speak out

Walk into any market in Ludhiana, Moga or Abohar and ask a shopkeeper what he fears most. It isn’t GST or slow sales. It’s a call from a foreign number, a voice demanding lakhs, and a calm promise of what happens if he says no. Over two years, Punjab Police received more than 500 extortion calls, and the real number is almost certainly higher, because most people quietly pay and tell no one. In July 2025, businessman Sanjay Verma was shot dead outside his showroom in Abohar, and days earlier a doctor was shot inside his own nursing home in Moga after an extortion threat traced to a Canada-based operative. These are not stories from a conflict zone. These are ordinary Punjabi towns.

This month the list grew longer. On 3 October, Mad Sandhu was shot dead, and police say the man who pulled the trigger received just Rs 11,000. Ten days later, in Mansa, anti-drug activist Parminder Singh Jhota was killed, allegedly by a medical shop owner, and the shooting was reportedly streamed live on Facebook. Jhota had spent years confronting the people who sell drugs in his area, the kind of courage most of us only admire from a distance. Police say the motive was personal enmity, and the main accused has since been arrested in Rajasthan. But his father says the state never gave his son any protection, and he has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to keep his grandchildren safe. When a grieving father in Punjab looks to Delhi instead of Chandigarh for safety, it tells you how much trust has drained away.

The deeper problem is that criminals in Punjab have learned they can outlast the system. In 2024, Punjab’s courts convicted the accused in only 34.7 per cent of completed criminal trials, against a national average of 53.3 per cent. That 18.6-point gap was the widest in nine years. By the end of that year, about 1.29 lakh criminal cases, nearly 87 per cent of the total, were still pending. The Sidhu Moosewala murder of May 2022, which shook the whole country, was still at the stage of examining the complainant as of April 2026. If even the most high-profile killing in the state’s recent memory crawls through the courts, what message does that send to a shooter willing to kill for Rs 11,000?

Behind the guns sits the drug trade, and the numbers are just as grim. NCRB data for 2023 showed Punjab recording 89 overdose deaths, the highest of any state for the second year running, and the country’s highest rate of drug trafficking cases at 25.3 per lakh people. The supply keeps coming across the 553-kilometre border with Pakistan. In 2025 alone, the BSF seized 272 drones and over 367 kg of heroin along the Punjab frontier. In the first half of 2026, Punjab Police recovered another 467 kg from just nineteen big seizures. Each of these numbers is a success for the forces involved. Taken together, they are also proof of how much is being pushed in, and how much more must be getting through.

To be fair to the AAP government, it has not been idle. Its "Yudh Nashian Virudh" campaign claims around 73,000 drug peddlers arrested in 500 days, and its anti-gangster drive reported more than 35,000 arrests. But arrests are not the same as results. If tens of thousands of arrests still leave an activist dead in Mansa, a shooter available for the price of a phone, and heroin landing by drone night after night, then the strategy is treating symptoms while the disease spreads.

What Punjab needs is a war fought on every front at once. The border has to be sealed with modern anti-drone systems, tight coordination between the BSF and state police, and zero tolerance for any official, in uniform or out, who helps the smugglers. The money has to be followed, with the property of drug lords and gang handlers seized and the hawala channels that fund them shut down, because a gang without cash is a gang without shooters. The handlers living comfortably in Canada, the US and Dubai have to be brought back through persistent extradition and diplomatic pressure. Courts need fast-track benches for gang and narcotics cases, and witnesses and activists need real protection, so that the next Parminder Singh Jhota does not have to fight alone. Above all, addicts must be treated as patients rather than statistics, through proper rehabilitation, jobs and sports for young people, so that the market for drugs shrinks along with the supply.

This is where the Modi government’s record deserves attention. For decades, experts said Naxalism was too deep-rooted ever to be defeated. The Centre set a firm deadline, brought every affected state and every agency onto one plan, and combined relentless operations with surrender and development schemes. Over three years, 4,839 Maoists surrendered, 2,218 were arrested and 706 were neutralised in encounters, and twelve members of the Maoist central committee were eliminated. On 31 March 2026, India was declared free of Naxalism. That mix of political will, central coordination and long-term patience is exactly what has been missing in Punjab’s fight against the drug and gang mafia. Punjab is a frontline state, so its security is national security. The drug money that crosses its border funds weapons and terror as easily as it funds addiction. A government where the state and the Centre work as one team, instead of trading blame, could finally give Punjabis what they have asked for year after year: the freedom to open their shop, speak up against drugs and answer their phone without fear.

Punjab has survived darker decades than this and rebuilt itself each time. It can do so again, but only with leadership that is serious about winning, not only about counting arrests.

Punjab has survived darker decades than this and rebuilt itself each time. It can do so again, but only with leadership that is serious about winning, not only about counting arrests

The writer is an expert in global affairs and geopolitics; Views presented are personal.