CUTTACK: Ask for a `Power Plus' at a familiar pan shop and you get a stuff that would `recharge' you instantly. No, the power plus has nothing to do with your cell phone recharge vouchers. It's a pouch of narcotic substance.

That's how the drug business has gone `mobile-savvy' in Cuttack city and the narcotic substances are easily available in every second kiosk whereas the mobile recharge vouchers of a particular company are difficult to come by even with a premium.

Amid increasing haul of brown sugar from unsuspecting places, senior police officials here are apprehensive that narcotics and psychotropic substances are clandestinely manufactured right inside the city.

Indigenously prepared

After demolition of a makeshift unit of Azad Pervez in Balasore almost decade ago, it was believed that all the consignment of brown sugar consumed in Cuttack was coming from outside. "But with increase in drug abuse cases and its easy availability, presence of indigenous manufacturing units cannot be ruled out," says a senior police official.

Police here believe that a major chunk of narcotic substances was coming from the golden crescent bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is supplemented by the supply from major opium growing areas of Rajasthan, UP, MP and Manipur via Kolkata. But looking at the quality of the stuff available here, it is apprehend that manufacturing units also exist in the city itself.

The district police have time and again admitted that the trend in drug abuse is disturbing.

Every year, on an average more than 50 cases are registered by the Cuttack police with over hundred arrests. But what worries the policemen is, the downslide of conviction rate and increase of acquittal rates in NDPS cases.

Although registering a case under NDPS is a tough job because of more safeguards provided in this stringent act, police is a demoralised lot due to increasing acquittal rates.

Special task force

"Only because some property theft is entangled with the drug addicts, it is considered a law and order problem. Otherwise the excise sleuths need to tackle this menace,'' says a senior inspector of the city. Some officers are also of the opinion that a special task force has to be set up at state and district-level to look into this menace.

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