• Drug users took up the habit due to lack of love and care

Gaighat, January 2 Police in Udayapur arrested more than 100 persons for smuggling and using drugs in the district this fiscal. Police data showed 115 drug smugglers and users were arrested since the beginning of the current fiscal. Of them, police filed cases against 56 persons; seven were remanded to judicial custody; 20 others were kept in police custody for investigation and one was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Kathmandu. “In the past, we mostly arrested drug users. This time, however, we have nabbed smugglers who were operating in city areas for long. We found that various types of drugs were smuggled from across the border,” said Udyapur District Police Office Chief SP Nawaraj Bhatta, who reckoned that most of the drug users took to drugs due to lack of love and care in their families. “The majority of drug users are teenagers who go to English medium schools and belong to families that are better off, which suggests that those kids took to drugs as they didn’t get much love and care from their families,” said the SP Bhatta, adding that drugs smuggled from across the border reached the hilly district of Khotang and Okhaldhunga via Gaighat, Katari and Beltar. “In recent years, drug users have been increasing even in the hills but we are committed to root out this scourge from society,” Bhatta vowed.