THE DRUGGED VALLEY

WASIM KHALID
Published in Indian Express Sunday, June 11, 2006

The night was still—except for a few street dogs keeping Srinagar’s dark lanes alive. Shakeel Ahmad Tunda sat slumped on his haunches on a pavement near Dalgate. Every day after sundown, this 18-year-old autorickshaw driver goes on a compulsive trip. Tonight, he agreed to take us along.

After the customary greetings, he started to walk, asking us to follow. He moved down a narrow lane, crossed a wooden bridge that connected two residential neighbourhoods inside the Dal lake. We followed him like shadows in complete silence.

A few metres ahead, he stopped, looked around and knocked at a door. A middle-aged woman peeped out. “Here are your five pieces,” she whispered. Tunda thrust a five-hundred-rupee note in her hand, and bend over to hide the five little sachets inside his socks.

Srinagar city has turned into Kashmir’s drug capital. The trade, though illegal, is virtually open. A study carried out on drug abuse in the Valley by Government Psychiatry Hospital reveals that more than 17 per cent of Kashmiri youth—mostly in the age group of 16 to 35—are addicted to drugs. Heroin, brown sugar, cannabis and deadly medicinal opiates top the list.

“We have an opiate epidemic at hand,” said Dr Arshad Hussain, registrar, Government Psychiatric Hospital. “The studies reveal that 17-20 per cent of our youth are involved in substance abuse. Eighty-five per cent of the substance abusers take opiates. We have 7-10 boys (drug addicts) coming here daily. These figures don’t indicate the actual number of the Valley’s substance abusers. Most of them either prefer private clinics or do not visit a doctor at all.”

Tunda turned back to face us. “Brown sugar is very costly. Each one of us has to contribute money,” he turned away and started walking fast. We followed. In a few minutes, we were in the Kohnakhan neighbourhood. Next to the Central Reserve Police Force camp, Tunda took a furtive look around and then crept through a hole in the brick wall. It was an abandoned temple with thick vegetation all around. Tunda’s friends were already waiting there. They sat in a ring and smoked.

Here we met 22-year-old Rafiq Ahmad, an orphan from Dalgate. “This addiction has ruined my life,” he rued. “I was driven to it by some foreign tourists while working as a guide. One day, they gave me a cigarette. I didn’t know it had brown sugar.”

Tunda and Ahmad wanted to get rid of their addiction and agreed to help us expose this drug ring. Next morning, they took us to various drug dens across the city:

• In the congested Buchwara residential locality, the duo took us to a ramshackle house that was a favourite with the local teenagers. The house belonged to an orphan, Ajaz Ahmad, and at 7.30 in the morning, had 12 young guests smoking.

• In the foothills of Shankar Acharya lies a graveyard. “A large number of addicts come here,” informed Tunda. “Every evening, they assemble in rings, in groups of six or more addicts.”

• Close to a Muslim shrine in downtown city is another drug den. Next to Srinagar’s Central Jail at Badamwari, scores of young men were busy sniffing brown sugar.

The cannabis is grown locally and is available across the Valley, especially south Kashmir. More refined drugs like brown sugar and heroin, according to local substance abusers, make their way from Delhi to south Kashmir and then to Srinagar. In fact, the crude opioids are actually sent from south Kashmir to Delhi where they are refined and sent back.

“We get brown sugar and heroin from Sangam (a village in south Kashmir),” said Aijaz Ahmad as he smoked with his friends. “We often go there to buy stuff. It is less expensive there.”

From rural Kashmir, the drugs make it to the markets in Srinagar with their prices jacked up to accommodate big profit margins. For every gram of brown sugar, Ahmad said he paid Rs1,500 in Srinagar as compared to only Rs 500 in south Kashmir.

In Srinagar, the drug peddlers also deliver the consignment to your doorstep. All you need is to dial ten digits—the drug peddlers are available on call but you need to know the parlance. “It’s a must so that they can identify a genuine buyer,” said Tunda.

The more deadly forms—the medicinal opiates—are sold openly by the drug stores even without doctor’s prescription. The Sunday Express investigation reveals that psychotropic drugs worth Rs 1.5 crore are sold in the Valley every month. “I sold some 10,000 strips of a single psychotropic product last month,” says a pharmaceutical distributor pleading anonymity. There are hundreds of such distributors.

The drug dealers, most of them women, have no inhibitions. It is not difficult to see why. In our presence, a policeman entered Ajaz Ahmad’s house. “He has come to collect his protection money,” said Mohammad Yousuf Hakroo, puffing at his joint. “He regularly visits this place to make a quick buck.”