Jaipur: Rajasthan Police have arrested 100 wanted narcotics offenders over the past year, with a combined bounty of Rs 27 lakh on them, officials said. The Anti Narcotics Task Force (ANTF), constituted on Oct 7 last year to target drug trafficking, made the arrests across 12 states.IG ANTF Vikas Kumar said the agency arrested 69 in Rajasthan, 11 in Madhya Pradesh, eight in Gujarat, two each in Haryana and Punjab, and one each in Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra, Kerala, Daman and Diu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.Jalore recorded the most arrests in Rajasthan at 12, followed by Barmer with 11, Chittorgarh seven and Jaipur six. Seventy-four of those arrested were from Rajasthan and 16 from Madhya Pradesh. The rest were from Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.Of the 100, 49 faced fewer than three cases, 27 faced three to six cases, nine faced six to nine, six faced nine to 12 and nine faced more than 12 cases.Kumar said the ANTF classified the 100 as “narco kingpins” because they handled the main operations rather than working as peddlers. “Many of those arrested had only a handful of cases because, unlike peddlers, they operated from the shadows and evaded arrest,” he said.The ANTF also maintains a “Narco 25” list of its most active wanted kingpins who remain at large.Among the operations highlighted by the ANTF was the arrest of a wanted accused in Kerala, 2,250 km from Rajasthan, and a man from Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh who had five encounters with police. The task force also arrested a chemistry teacher in West Bengal, a Jodhpur suspect who had evaded four arrest attempts and another accused in Anantnag, Jammu & Kashmir, in an operation it described as high-risk.
