Drugs being sold and used openly across Delhi University campuses

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, July 6, 2015: As Delhi University (DU) gears up for a new academic session, a Mail Today investigation reveals that drugs -from ganja and charas to the more hardcore LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), MDMA (methylenedioxyphenethylamine), ketamine and the new sensation Meow Meow (4-methylmethcathinone) - are being sold and used openly across college campuses.

 

Not just the demand for high percentage, drug abuse unites north and south campuses of the hallowed Delhi University.

Sample this: Madangir Village in south Delhi that has two big colleges near it, the College of Vocational Studies (CVS) and Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, is where you can simply stroll in and pick up marijuana that popularly goes by the name of weed or ganja. While policemen claim to have tightened the noose around peddlers in the area, Mail Today found a well-oiled machinery at work barely 20 metres from the police post.

Sitting inside a grocery shop and selling the dough openly for college kids, a middle-aged woman told us it’s her daily business. Posing as undergraduate college students and filming the entire episode with our spycam, we asked her the price of weed. She offered 10 grams of weed for Rs 100. At this point, a man standing near her shop came up to us and offered a guided tour of other dens where better quality ganja was sold for a premium. All this was happening right outside the Madangir village police checkpost!

Drugs are also being sold over the phone. Peddlers have gone mobile - now one can simply give them a call at widely-circulated numbers, which Mail Today accessed, for free home delivery of drugs.

The administration, meanwhile, has turned a blind eye to what is going on in their backyards. Principal of Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, PK Khurana, said he had no knowledge of drug peddling around the college campus.

High-quality charas

Our investigation took us to the dingy bylanes of Govindpuri and its better-off neighbourhood Kalkaji in Delhi’s Southeast district. These are favourite haunts for college-goers to buy hash, with two of DU’s prominent south Delhi colleges, Deshbandhu and Acharya Narendra Dev, in the vicinity. Barely a twominute walk from the Deshbandhu College campus, we met a 20-year-old who goes by the alias ’KD’, and moves around with the fashionable ’Savy’, also barely out of his teens. The duo was delivering a consignment of charas to a college student who did not want his name disclosed. We were promised any amount of high-quality charas (ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs 4,000 for 10 grams) at an hour’s notice.

The principal of Deshbandhu College, Ajay Arora, denied having come across drug-related issues, though he accepted catching students drinking and smoking on campus red-handed. "Once I did get a complaint from parents that their kid had become an addict," said Arora, who advocated counselling for such students.

Southeast District DCP MS Randhawa told Mail Today that he was clueless about such open drug peddling around college campuses. "We take measures to curb such nefarious activities when they are brought to our knowledge," he said.

Colleges of DU’s North Campus, too, have their own supply chain of drugs such as MDMA, Ket, hash and weed. Areas such as Timarpur and Model Town are hubs of cannabis and Meow Meow. Peddlers are on call and they meet you at secluded areas around the campus with the supply.

But Hindu College principal also feigned ignorance of any such trade near her college. She did accept, however, that drug abuse was rampant around certain other college campuses. "There are certain areas around colleges in the North where such activities have been noticed. We try to be vigilant and the students have been warned against such activities," said Dr Anju Srivastava.

Madhur Varma, DCP of Delhi’s north district, said, "These activities are usually witnessed in and around Timarpur and Majnu Ka Tila, but we ensure that criminals are caught and booked under the NDPS Act. Police personnel have been stationed near the University campus to keep check on such activities."

However, in the shade of groves at the Faculty of Arts in north campus, we saw students brazenly rolling joints of charas and ganja. They boasted of smoking up and even doing hard drugs despite the presence of campus security guards. "These guards are temporary daily wagers. We can easily bully them into silence."

Under another tree, four students were caught on our sting camera, crushing dried charas to fill in their cigarettes. "Why do you ask what we are doing here? Don’t you know the answer? We are students, why will guards or anyone else question us?" said another student. When asked, Minni Sawhney, Dean, Faculty of Arts, told Mail Today heard ’vague rumours’.

 

Courtesy: Indiatoday