The other reason behind the rise in the number of female drug peddlers in the district, which shares an open and porous border with India, is that they are less suspected than men by the security personnel that guard the border check points.
Now that the law and enforcement agencies have stepped up the effort to crack down on drug smuggling and abuse, the smugglers are using women to pass the contraband across border. Even women from well-off families are trapped into the drug smuggling rackets - to manage money for their own addiction.
Bina, 30, from Bhairahawa is one of them. [break]
Blessed with two children, a happy married life, an affluent family and what not, she should not have bothered to earn any money to meet her regular expenses. Her husband, who is working aboard send millions of rupees annually to her. But, she was arrested while carrying a contraband drug and recently released on bail after languishing one and half months behind the bars.
Rama from Butwal, who was arrested along with Bina, has also been charged with drug smuggling. Both Bina and Rama, who turned drug addicts three years back, have confessed to the police that they had been buying cheap drugs from various Indian cities to sell them for a higher rate in Nepal to make money to support their own addiction.
Similarly, Anju, who was arrested with some narcotic brown sugar last year from Butwal, has been serving time at Palpa prison. Anju, who was habituated to the narcotic drug, starting from the friend circle, was used by drug smugglers, who lured her with raising money for her addiction.
These are the only few representative cases.
Police have arrested 35 women on the charge of drug smuggling in the past three years from three districts in Lumbini zone that borders on India. After the increased security surveillance along the border to thwart drug smuggling, the smugglers have found to be luring innocent and poor girls and women with the pecuniary earning , using them as a porter to pass the contraband across the border. Not only the drug addicts are found working as porters, even ignorant village women, unaware about the drugs, are being deceptively used for the purpose by the smugglers.
Gita Nepali, who used to work as a construction worker, was arrested from the border town of Krishna Nagar while she was carrying brown sugar. According to Nepali, the smugglers had promised her to pay Rs 3,000 for passing a bagful of narcotic drug to India.
She was lured as she used to earn merely 200 rupees after a day´s toil as a construction worker. As Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Mingma Lama sums up: “The girls and women, who have fallen prey to drug abuse, are drawn to drug peddling in an attempt to meet expense for their addiction, while ignorant and poor women are being lured by the easy money.”
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