Chandigarh:
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Wednesday directed the state police chief to cost these immediately concerned within the hooch tragedy that has claimed 113 lives, for homicide.
Promising justice for the victims of the case, which he termed as the most important tragedy of current occasions, the chief minister asserted that he is not going to tolerate any political interference within the case.
Mr Singh additionally mooted enhancement of punishment for spurious or poisonous liquor manufacturing and smuggling underneath the Excise Act, to make sure repeat offenders stay behind the bars and will not be capable of come out simply to indulge once more within the crime.
In the course of the cupboard assembly, a number of ministers agreed to Advocate Common Atul Nanda’s suggestion that a strict legislation like Punjab Management of Organised Crime Act (PCOCA) was wanted to fight organised crime like illicit liquor smuggling.
The chief minister requested the sub-committee, arrange underneath minister Brahm Mohindra, to look at the provisions of the proposed legislation, to finalise and submit its report on the earliest.
He agreed with Sukhjinder Randhawa and different ministers that Punjab Management of Organised Crime Act (PCOCA) may assist management hardcore criminals and act as a deterrent to gangsters, who proceed to deal in organised crime even from jail, and had shut connections with terrorists too, in accordance with a authorities launch.
The chief minister’s directives on the hooch tragedy got here throughout two separate video conferences – one of many cupboard assembly and the opposite a assessment assembly of the case with prime police and administrative officers.
Amarinder Singh additionally led his council of ministers in observing a two-minute silence as a mark of homage to the victims of the tragedy. As many as 113 folks died within the hooch tragedy with 84, the utmost fatalities, in Tarn Taran, adopted by 15 in Amritsar and 14 in Batala.
“End off this enterprise, clear up the border areas. This has to cease,” mentioned the chief minister in his directive to police and district officers throughout the assessment video convention earlier.
The poisonous liquor enterprise, utilizing ”lahan” (uncooked materials for making liquor), has been occurring in border areas for a very long time. However now it had assumed much more harmful proportions with the brand new pattern of smuggling from neighbouring states, then chief minister mentioned.
Asserting that he wished “to see an finish to this complete enterprise of spurious and illicit or smuggled liquor,” Mr Singh directed the officers involved to be extraordinarily strict in coping with the criminals, whether or not male or feminine.
Reiterating his authorities’s zero-tolerance coverage to illicit and spurious liquor, and medicines, he requested the police to coordinate intently with the excise and different departments involved to wipe this menace out of Punjab as soon as and for all.
Mentioning that the victims of the hooch tragedy had been the poorest of the poor, Mr Singh set a 10-day deadline for the deputy commissioners and law enforcement officials involved to determine and course of circumstances to offer focused further reduction for his or her households.
The chief minister has already introduced Rs 2 lakh ex gratia to the households of every of the victims of the tragedy.
Senior police official SPS Parmar mentioned circumstances have been registered underneath expenses of punishment for culpable murder not amounting to homicide of the IPC and the Excise Act, and a coordinated crackdown had been launched in all border areas to determine and nab the criminals and provoke strict motion in opposition to them underneath the legislation.
He revealed that originally, the households of the victims in Tarn Taran, which had suffered the utmost lack of lives, hid the deaths and cremated the our bodies with out put up mortem.
Mr Parmar instructed the introduction of color coding for ethanol and different spirits to examine their unlawful sale and distribution.
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