Congress's Punjab in-charge Sachin Pilot hit out at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Pary (BJP) over the issue of drugs, saying the situation is so bad that “chitta” ( a slang for synthetic heroin) gets delivered at people's doorstep on a phone call faster than pizza and Coca-Cola.
"People in Punjab say that if you want to order pizza or a coke, it takes half an hour or 40 minutes but one can call and get 'chitta' home delivered faster," Pilot was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
‘Chemical drugs coming from Pakistan’
Pilot claimed that there is an ‘unlimited supply’ of 'chitta' (drugs) and chemical drugs are coming into Punjab from across the border, Pakistan. “Funnily enough, the BJP, which is ruling from Delhi for the last 12 years, is saying 'we will make Punjab ‘nasha-mukt’," the Congress leader said.
He raised questions about the cross-border supply of drugs and asked, “What has the home ministry been doing? ... ₹21,000 crore worth of cocaine was seized from Mundra Port in Gujarat. This was seized. So one can imagine how much drugs would have come in.”
This amount of haul of captured drugs from an international port is a very telling sign of how things have shaped out, Pilot added.
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"Once the drugs reach the Punjab border, how can they be distributed down to the village and mohallas without the consent of the mafia that operates between the police, the administration and the politicians, it is impossible," he said.
Pilot accuses AAP of worsening drug problem
He accused the AAP government of worsening Punjab's drug problem as he took a potshot at the Mann government for its past claims that it would eradicate the menace within two months.
"Forget getting rid of it. They made it so much worse now. It's actually very disturbing to see visuals of addicts...there are also the zombie drugs, young boys and girls are becoming addicts. So many addiction centres have opened but no one is going there," Pilot was quoted as saying.
Pilot slammed the Bhagwant Mann government over the law-and-order situation in the border state and claimed that the police stations were not targeted even during the peak days of terrorism. But now there were grenades being lobbed at police stations and police officers being shot, he said.
Pilot linked this "collapse" with "narco money".
While the opposition in Punjab has slammed the AAP government over the drugs problem and law-and-order situation, the Mann-led dispensation has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.