Heroin in short supply leads to high demand for poppy husk in Punjab

AMRITSAR: The poppy husk is not only cheap as compared to heroin but is also easily available in the market with continuous supplies from states like Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.


The recent seizures of poppy husk from Pathankot district which shares its boundaries not only with Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory and Himachal Pradesh but also shares around 25 kilometres of stretch with Pakistan reveals the demand and supply of poppy husk in Punjab.


Pathankot police alone has sized around five to six hundred kg of poppy husk in one month's time.

Poppy husk from Kashmir fetches lucrative prices in Punjab as compared to the one smuggled from MP.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Pathankot Harkamalpreet Singh Khakh informed that they had seized over five hundred kg of poppy husk and broke the supply chain.

Giving details Khakh informed that poppy husk was available at around Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000 per kg in Kashmir and was sold for around Rs 6,000 kg in Punjab whereas poppy husk from MP and Rajasthan was available at around Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,000 per kg and was sold in Punjab from Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,500.

Border Security Force (BSF) Deputy Inspector General, Gurdaspur Sector Prabhakar Joshi informed that barring the seizure of 4 kg heroin, no major haul was made in the last month due to the high vigil of BSF personnel at the international border.

Poppy husk is derived from dried poppy pod and straw after extraction of the gum from pod which still contains some portion of alkaloids and gives an intoxicating effect upon consumption in a sufficient quantity.

In past, there has been a demand for legalizing poppy cultivation and even a group of social activists and farmers' bodies had begun a movement to press upon the government to allow the legal cultivation of poppy to produce opium. They had argued that poppy cultivation could show a way out of paddy-wheat rotation.