FEROZEPUR
: Shaheedan di dharti de soormeyan da khoon hun chitta pe gaya ey.
Pakistan
di himmat nai, saade aapne hi gaddar jimmevar ne es nasalkushi layi (Bravehearts of martyrs’ land now have white blood. Pakistan can’t dare; our own traitors are responsible for this genocide).
This is how Ajit Singh (84), who valiantly donned the olive greens during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars and retired from the Army as a havaldar, sums up the sorry state of affairs in Punjab’s
border district
Ferozepur, which is tightly in the grip of chitta or
heroin
being pumped from Pakistan through the international border.
Videos
Ask anyone in this border belt about the burning issues in the Lok Sabha elections, pat comes the response in pecking order —
drugs
, unemployment, lack of industries, theft, snatchings, and extortions.
And, all these issues are interrelated. People also demand reopening of the Hus- sainiwala international border for trade since it has been lying closed after the 1971 Indo-Pak war.
It is in Hussainiwala that the last rites of revolutionary martyrs Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were performed in March 1931 on the banks of Sutlej river.
A native of Baba Ram Lal Nagar, where at least 200 houses out of nearly 300 have one or more members settled abroad, the Army veteran rues, “Chitte ne jinda murde banate saade jawan munde ithe. Saanu shauk nahi karza le ke bachcheyan nu baahar bhejan da (Heroin has turned our young boys into living corpses here. We are not pleased to send our children abroad by taking loans).”
DRUG PANGS
- A long queue of narcotics-addicted patients, including women, outside the outpatient opioid assisted treatment (OOAT) centre inside District Hospital Ferozepur from 8 am to 2 pm daily depicts the enormity of the sit- uation — how wide the drugs have spread their tentacles.
- They come here to get their free dose of Buprenorphine and Naloxone combination sublingual tablets to get out of the clutches of substance abuse. Since its start in 2018, this OOAT centre has had as many as 3,346 drugsdependent patients, including seven women, in the age bracket of 17-86 years.
“We are registering on average 10-15 new patients every month. Female patients are generally those who have either their husbands hooked to heroin or have distorted relationships or are into prostitution,” says female psychiatrist at the hospital Dr Navdeep Soi.
She says after registration, the patients have to come to the OOAT centre for medicine daily and only after a month are they given medicine for 14 days in one visit.
There are even such patients who sell their medicines for money to others, she quips. There are over 20 similar OOAT centres across Ferozepur district and the centres with maximum registration of heroin addicted patients include at Makhu, Guru Har Sahai and Mamdot.
A 28-year-old injectable heroin dependent truck driver registered here in 2019 accepts that like many drivers he does sometimes get bhukki (poppy husk) from Phalodi in Rajasthan.
“A single dose of heroin called ‘bit’ by users is available now for nearly Rs 800-1,000,” he claims.
Another 73-year-old opium-dependent patient in the queue reveals how bike theft cases are common by the unemployed drug addicts in Ferozepur, even inside the district hospital campus.
“It is very difficult to get out of drug addiction. Unfortunately, many parents have lost young boys to heroin overdose in many areas here, including infamous Basti Shekhan Wali,” he rues.
Agreeing to the strong local nexus for quick money, Parkash Singh (47) of Gatti Mattar village under Mamdot block tells how nearly 10 days back, the police had arrested a youngster, Charanjeet Channi, of his village with nearly 2.5 kg heroin.
MIGRATION BLUES
His two grandsons are truck drivers in Winnipeg and one in Adelaide earning between Rs 3-3.5 lakh per month. The granddaughter was sent to Winnipeg on study visa to pursue MSc nursing course six months back after spending over Rs 22 lakh.
They took Rs 15 lakh education loan from UCO Bank at nearly 11% interest rate and the remaining amount as property loan at almost similar interest rate. The granddaughter has also started working there in a departmental store to earn $16 per hour and she can work for 20 hours in a week.
Other than truck drivers, plumbers and security guards also get handsome salaries in Canada, he says.
AGNIPATH SCHEME
- Ferozepur has one of the oldest Army cantonments in the country which was established by Britishers in 1839.
Since this cantonment also has an Army recruitment office, it has served as one of the major employers for the youth from the region.
But the launch of the Agnipath Scheme in June 2022, under which the youth in the age group of 17.5 to 21 years are recruited as Agniveers for a period of four years without any pensionary benefits, has come as a major setback to the youth.
“This will definitely dent the BJP’s vote bank for spoiling the lives of our children. We are a martial race and like this the govt is forcing youth towards unemployment, drugs and crime,” says Anokh Singh, a retired Subedar from Aliwala village in Ferozepur, pointing towards the rising number of gangsters in the region who even call shots from inside jails.
The Contest
Ferozepur Lok Sabha constituency has been a stronghold of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) continuously in the last six elections since 1998. But this time it is not an easy game because of a multi-cornered contest.
As sitting MP and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal has refrained from contesting, the party has now fielded former MP Zora Singh Mann’s son Nardev Singh alias Bobby Mann.
Former MP from SAD Sher Singh Ghubaya, representing the strong Rai Sikh community here, is contesting on the Congress ticket. Muktsar MLA Jagdep Singh Kaka Brar has been fielded by the Aam Aadmi Party. Former cabinet minister in the Congress govt Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi is contesting on the Bharatiya Janata Party ticket.
