Una/Shimla, May 3: The drug trail running through Himachal’s border belt has exploded into the open. A 1.005 kg heroin (chitta) haul by the Special Task Force (STF) near Santoshgarh has not just led to the arrest of three local accused—but also blown the lid off what officials now suspect is a much larger, deeply entrenched narcotics network operating through the Una corridor.
The late-night naka on May 2 intercepted a white Maruti Fronx (HP-20J-6570), from which the commercial quantity of heroin was recovered, neatly packed and concealed in the trunk.
The arrested accused—Gurmukh Singh (Barnoh), Raman Kumar (Samoor Kalan), and Sarvjeet Singh alias Vinder (Upper Dehlan)—are now in custody, with an FIR registered under stringent provisions of the NDPS Act at Sadar Police Station, Una.
But the seizure is being seen as just the tip of the iceberg. It is Police STF that busted this gang. But local police has failed over the years indicated that smugglers have penetratred into the ranks of district police.
The recovery clearly points to organised trafficking. The scale and packaging indicate a supply chain far beyond local peddling. We are probing backward and forward linkages,” a senior police official told Himbumail.
Ground-level inputs and enforcement patterns have long hinted that Una–Damtal belt is fast emerging as a critical transit hub for chitta movement, given its proximity to interstate borders with Punjab.
Investigators are now digging into whether this gang is systematically used or have linkages with the well-networked syndicates to push narcotics deeper into hill districts.
What is raising eyebrows further is the parallel chatter around sudden, unexplained wealth in pockets along this belt, often flagged in enforcement circles as a red signal of illicit trade.
While officials remain tight-lipped, sources admit that the financial trail—properties, cash flows, and possible protection networks—will be key to cracking the full chain.
The STF action is being seen as a decisive strike that has rattled the network, but insiders concede that another, more complex layer—who enables and sustains these syndicates—still needs to be unearthed.
For now, the crackdown has put the chitta corridor is under heat. And with the investigation widening, the fallout may not stop at just three arrests.
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