War on drugs make history sheeters feel the heat | Chandigarh … – Times of India

JALANDHAR: The war against drugs is making cops dust off old files pertaining to habitual offenders, and to their surprise most of the cases against these history sheeters are pertaining to drug trafficking. Making it mandatory for station house officers (SHO) to make entries in their own hand in a particular register at the police station has led to opening of history sheets of 369 drug peddlers in six districts of Jalandhar zone in the last four months.

The campaign to open history sheets on the basis of cases already registered against criminals was started from December 1 and already over 700 history sheets have been opened and over half of them face cases under the NDPS Act.

Sources said that several of these 369 persons with criminal record have serious criminal charges apart from drug peddling. Before this practice of basic policing was enforced in the last week of November last year, there were only 163 persons in all these six districts whose history sheets were opened by the police. It is learnt that all those against whom history sheets have been opened now had five or more cases registered against each of them but were not in the bad character (BC) list due to lapses in basic police practices. The BC list has names of those persons whose history sheets are maintained by the police.

It is learnt that even as maintaining Register No. 12 - in which a police station is supposed to maintain complete record about cases registered against a resident of the area under its jurisdiction even if the cases are registered at other places also - is an old practice but it was not being followed properly at police stations and history sheets of several of the habitual criminals were not being opened.

However, Jalandhar zone IG L K Yadav over four months back issued orders fixing responsibility of SHOs in making entries in their own hand in Register No. 12 about information regarding cases against criminals who happen to be residents of the areas under their jurisdiction. A few SHOs even faced action after they failed to strictly comply with the directions.

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War on drugs make history sheeters feel the heat | Chandigarh ... - Times of India