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Our Correspondent
DIGBOI: “Youths on motorcycle in the age group of 15 to 20 years constituting mostly the dependents of Digboi AOD employees of Muliabari and other AOD residential areas are regular visitors to Kherjan Nepali Basti wherein drugs are kept ready and handy in some selected houses for consumption,” said one of the neighbours of a notorious drug peddler.
“The location of the house of this drug peddler is on a favourable edge of the Digboi-Pengaree Road near Upper Dehing Reserve Forest adjacent to Dhekiajan Madhavdev Primary School. It is an incentive for the peddler and consumers alike for risk-free transaction and inhaling the contraband substances,” said a Gorkha activist of the area who did not wish to be named.
“The peddler was arrested a couple of months back by Digboi Police along with objectionable apparatus being used for inhaling the drugs but ironically the peddler returned home unprosecuted a couple of hours later,” said one of the residents of Dhekiajan, adding, “Several raids were conducted earlier and student bodies and local organizations also took initiatives to curb the menace but the scenario never changed.”
The area is becoming a safe drug hub for the youths of the locality as well as nearby areas like Khalgaon, Kherjan, Kherjan Pahar Basti, Kololuwa and Bhimpather and other consumers from Pengaree, Bordumsa and Digboi township areas like Borbil, Ramnagar, Muliabari and Golai. According to local sources, the students of nearby Bappuji Bhimpather High School have also started visiting the hub and if the menace if not checked on time, it is sure to affect students and youths on a rather wider scale.
Talking to The Sentinel on Monday morning, a well-established businessman of the village said that the entire area had been affected by juvenile delinquency, vitiating the congenial atmosphere of the village. According to him, semi-liquid opium is fetched from Dimapur and Arunachal Pradesh by employing trained women for the purpose who deliver the consignment to a giant peddler at Dhekiajan near the Shiv Mandir, who further distributes the drug to local petty peddlers. The youths from different places inhale the opium in a readymade pipe available with the local peddlers in their houses.
“I am tired of counselling my 22-year old college going son who has fallen prey to drug addiction and behaves very unnaturally due to regular intake of drugs for the past few years with his friends in the Dhekiajan-Kherjan area,” said one of the affected parents of the Muliabari AOD residential area when approached by the reporter in the wake of allegations of the people of Bhimpather, Haldibari and Dhekiajan under Digboi Police Station regarding the unabated circulation and consumption of opium in Dhekiajan area along the Pengaree-Bordumsa Road in Tinsukia district.