FEROZEPUR – Pakistan-based drug peddlers have adopted a new strategy to lure farmers working in fields along the zero line into cross-border drug trade. They throw mobile phones over the barbed wire fencing through which they later try to contact and entice farmers by offering attractive incentives to act as drug couriers.
Over the past few days, BSF officials said, several Korea-made Nokia handsets had been recovered from the fields along the border. These phones had Pakistani SIMs of V-Phone company, they said.
The motive was to get in touch with farmers or the sentinels on duty along the border and entice them to enter the illegal drug trade, they said. “Pakistani SIMs can work hundreds of metres inside our territory. Such mobile phone signals are effective in more than 20 pockets along the border in Punjab,” said a BSF official.
“Indian service providers have been barred from providing connectivity in border areas. On the other hand, Pakistani service provider Mobilink, which leads the market share with nearly 31.35 million subscribers in Pakistan, has connectivity of up to 1 km in Mamdot, Khemkaran and Ferozepur areas. Signals from towers of “U Fone” company also penetrate into Mamdot and Amarkot areas across the fencing. SIMs of many other Pakistani companies are also being used by drug peddlers operating in border areas,” sources said.
“In the absence of stringent telecom regulatory laws in Pakistan, a large number of unregistered SIM cards are in circulation and many of these make their way into India,” they said. “We have recovered several such SIM cards along the border,” BSF officials said. Drug peddlers kept changing their numbers to ensure that they could not be tracked easily, sources said.
