Thirty-six-year-old Parwinder Singh ‘Jhota’, an anti-drug crusader in Punjab’s Mansa district, was on Monday evening released from the Muktsar Jail, after the Mansa Police, for the second time in the past six months, discharged him in one of the cases they had registered against him in the course of his “anti-drug campaign”. Mr. Singh came back to his home in Mansa district the same evening to a crowd of supporters.
The case that Mr. Singh was discharged in was related to an incident on April 22. He had got a minor boy to purchase an unauthorised dosage of pregabalin tablets from a pharmacy. When the boy brought the tablets back, Mr. Singh and his supporters went to the chemist and asked him to not sell such drugs. He then took back the ₹400 the child had given to purchase the drugs.
This had resulted in the Mansa Police booking him for extorting the chemist of ₹400.
“The Mansa Police told the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mansa that the complainant was withdrawing the case and hence they were seeking Mr. Singh’s discharge in the said case,” Lakhwinder Singh Lakhanpal, Mr. Singh’s lawyer told The Hindu.
In April this year, Mr. Singh, a former boxer and an addict who has been clean for eight years, decided to start a campaign to end drug abuse in Mansa. He sought guidance from farmer union leaders and started the Nasha Roko, Rozgaar Do campaign.
As he continued his work, raiding pharmacies and homes in villages and “counselling” people not to sell or use drugs, his popularity grew and manifested in the form of civilian Nasha Roko Committees opening up in villages across Mansa and Bathinda. But so did the cases against him.
Over the next few months, Mr. Singh was booked in two more cases related to similar raids conducted at either a pharmacy or the home of someone suspected of selling drugs. In one more case, he had been booked for allegedly trying to kill an addict.
In the attempt to murder case as well, the police had discharged Mr. Singh, saying he had been incorrectly booked in the case, Mr. Lakhanpal said.
Mr. Lakhanpal said that senior officials of the State government, including those in the Chief Minister’s Office, had held a meeting with them on September 5. “The State government has promised us that the other two cases against Mr. Singh will also be withdrawn,” he said, adding that the meeting was also attended by the senior leadership of the ruling party in Punjab, senior Mansa police officials, and the organisations that had been protesting to have Mr. Singh released.
Mr. Singh’s campaign has “inspired” the creation of Nasha Roko Committees across the southern Malwa region in Punjab, with villages from Faridkot and Bathinda to Mansa opening up their own ones. The Committees search and raid chemists or homes where drugs are suspected to be sold. They corner addicts, publicly shame and sometimes beat them into quitting substances and have no sanction from the police or the government, as The Hindu reported on September 1.
