Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister of India on Monday asked enforcement agencies to keep their vigil up and observe the big smugglers involved in drug trafficking and sending ‘mountains’ of illegal drugs into the country.
While adressing the 65th Founding Day of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence on Monday in the national capital she made some remarks regarding the entry of cocaine and physchotrophic drugs into our country and informed the agencies to check out whether India is becoming a consuming country.
“DRI should make sure that smugglers are not smarter than you. Each one of the smuggling case must come to the conclusion at the the earliest,”said Union Finance Minister.
She ordered the DRI to arrest and prosecute the smugglers and to ensure law of land is faced by the big handlers of such smuggling activities.
Nirmala Sitharaman remarked,” There is a need to work hard and catch that sending a mountains of drugs. Need to greater access to a bilateral agreement with foreign countries as technology has enabled us to do things which earlier was not possible.”
She also suggested DRI, CBIC and Revenue department to start a two-day-long meet to global cooperation.
She said,”Start a workshop with the cooperation of intelligence agencies for better cooperation, get actionable intelligence to crack the smugglers”
Further she added that Presidency of G-20 has been received by the country and it must take the opportunity for organising a meet globally where big organisations like FATF(Financial Action Task Force) should be called to have a look about the kind of work which is performed by them and how it can be helpful for us in prevention of smuggling.
As per the analysis of NDPS seizures, there has been shown a sharp increase in the number of seizures of the items in India.
According to the reports of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, seizures of cocaine increased 3,479% from 8.667kg to 310.21kg in year 2021-22 which was 1.108kg in year 2019-20.
The seizure for methamphetamine and heroin increased by 1,281% and 1,588% to 884.69kg and 3,410.71kg respectively according to the reports.
Moreover, data showed the maximum number of seizure for ganja in states like Madhya Pradesh, Triputra, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Maharashtra.
As per the reports, around 131 persons have been arrested for commences laible under NDPS Act,1985 during the financial year 2021-22.