Punjab’s Nasha Roko Committees: the anti-drug lords Premium

In 47 days since Parwinder Singh ‘Jhota’s arrest, a sit-in has been in progress at the Mansa district admin complex. Supported by thousands from Punjab’s Malwa region, farmer unions, and Nasha Roko Committees, they are protesting the drug problem and lack of faith in police/govt. Parwinder, a former drug user, started the ‘Nasha Roko, Rozgaar Do’ campaign. NRCs monitor villages, conduct sting ops, and publicly humiliate addicts/peddlers. Parwinder’s arrest evoked strong criticism from Opposition parties and the SGPC. NRCs are disrupting the supply chain, but police say most caught are addicts, not peddlers. Despite this, members are confident of the impact of their intervention.

In the 47 days since the arrest of Parwinder Singh ‘Jhota’, 36, a sit-in has been in progress on the premises of the Mansa district administration complex. About 15 to 20 people show up each day to join the handful camping here. They are supported every couple of weeks by a few thousands who come in from across Punjab’s southern Malwa region. Organised by the Nasha Roko Committees (NRCs) that have sprung across the area to fight the drug problem that is rampant across the State, they are joined by a few farmer unions. This is their way of registering a protest against Parwinder’s arrest and to show their lack of faith in the police and the government to rein in the drug problem.

Parwinder was a star athlete in school and college. He got the name Jhota, meaning bull, as a State-level boxer, though he also dabbled in cricket. He started using chitta, a heroin-based opioid, the first time he went to jail for a street fight. He quit in 2015 after a friend died from an overdose in front of him, a needle still in his arm.

The National Crime Records Bureau’s Accidental Death report showed that Punjab had 78 deaths from narcotics abuse in 2021. The State registered 127 deaths, the second-highest in the country, due to illicit substances or spurious liquor that year.

In early April this year, shaken by seeing children shooting up in a local park, Parwinder, now claiming to be clean, reached out to Punjab Kisan Union leader Sukhdarshan Singh Nato, who was also his neighbour. With his help, he started the ‘Nasha roko, rozgaar do’ (stop addiction, provide employment) campaign.

The NRCs — each village has its own — have been set up organically over the last four months as informal initiatives to stop the use and sale of drugs. Districts like Bathinda, Mansa, Sangrur, and Faridkot, all south of the Sutlej river, use their networks to monitor their villages. Each committee has anywhere from 12 people to the whole village involved. They track spots that addicts frequent, raid chemists they suspect are selling drugs, set up night-watch duties shared by volunteers, and even force their way into homes they feel chitta is being sold out of.

Twenty of Punjab’s 22 districts now figure in the Union government’s list of 372 districts most affected by substance abuse across India. In March this year, the Health Minister of Punjab, Balbir Singh, told the Assembly that the State had 8.74 lakh people in government-run and private de-addiction centres for substance abuse.

It is 1 a.m. About 10-15 men in their 20s position themselves at key intersections leading into Ghuman Kalan village in Bathinda district. Armed with swords, sticks, and smartphones, they have a shift until sunrise. Through the night, they will check and search any ‘suspicious’ vehicle or person coming their way. “We check any vehicle from outside the village,” says Rajendra Singh, a member of the drug vigilante squad. “If they are high, we see it in their eyes,” he says, but also, “When people smoke the chitta off the foil paper, they use a rolled-up currency note to inhale the smoke. When we search them, we look for currency notes that are rolled up or blackened,” the farmer in his early 30s explains enthusiastically.