Ghanaur: Youth Akali Dal national president and Ghanaur halqa incharge Sarabjeet Singh Jhinjer on Wednesday announced the launch of “Mission Fateh: War Against Drug Peddlers,” a campaign aimed at ridding the Ghanaur constituency of the drug trade.
Addressing a press conference in Ghanaur, Jhinjer unveiled a helpline number, 9914740101, urging residents to use it to report drug-related deaths and share information on peddlers operating in the area.
Jhinjer said the campaign would draw its force from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s principles of Educate, Agitate and Organise, with him personally visiting village after village to raise his voice against drugs, listen to the grievances of the people, and unite them against drug peddlers.
Accusing the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab over its failure to check the drug menace, Jhinjer alleged that around 10 youths have lost their lives to drug overdoses in Ghanaur in recent days, with at least three deaths recorded in the last 48 hours alone.
He said grieving families are often too frightened to report the real cause of death, alleging that police officials discourage them from disclosing drug-related deaths by raising questions of social stigma, a pattern he said has kept the official death toll artificially low.
He said his team had visited at least 20 locations across Ghanaur over the past 20 days and found that no investigation or probe had been initiated into the deaths.
Jhinjer appealed to leaders of all political parties in the constituency to rise above political considerations and work together to save the youth of Ghanaur from falling prey to drug abuse. Training his guns on Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, he recalled that Mann, before coming to power, had claimed that drugs could not be sold without the government’s tacit permission, and asked under whose patronage drugs were now being sold openly in Ghanaur.
Invoking Punjab’s history, Jhinjer said the land that stood undefeated against the Mughals and Ahmad Shah Abdali under Maharaja Ranjit Singh was today “suppressed” under the AAP government — not by any invading force, but by drugs. He also flagged the declining enrollment of Punjab and Sikh youth in the Indian Army, attributing the trend to the deepening drug crisis in the state.
“Mission Fateh is not just a campaign, it is a war we owe to the mothers of Ghanaur who have buried their sons in silence,” Jhinjer said, appealing to residents to come forward with information through the helpline so that Mission Fateh could target peddlers and dismantle the drug network operating in the constituency.
Among those present during the press conference were Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee member Jasmer Singh Lachhru, along with other party workers and leaders.