THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even as drug flow to the state continues unabated, the excise department is trying to tackle the menace with a big handicap. The excise does not have a proper cyber cell to collect information required to crack down the organised drug racket. Though the state government time and again maintains that the excise cyber cell is working, all it does is social media patrolling and forwarding the requests to police for digital details.
Excise sources said the excise cyber cell has two tech-savvy officers in each district, but their main job is to coordinate with the police to identify mobile tower location and the call detail records (CDRs) apart from patrolling social media platforms to track drug peddling.
Though the police cyber cell provides information sought by the excise, on many occasions the response is languid, resulting in the suspects getting away.
An excise officer said about 100 requests for locating the mobile tower of suspects and accused are forwarded to the police on an average basis from a district each month.
“The police cyber cell gives priority to their cases. So on many occasions, our requests get overlooked and the response is delayed. Owing to this, the culprits we’ve been tracking manage to escape,” said the officer.
As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) rule, the police are the only nodal agency allowed to set up a cyber cell in the state. Because of this stipulation, ramping up excise cyber cell would not serve any purpose as it won’t be able to access details nor tap phones as its police counterpart. Excise sources said the only viable option is to set up a police cyber cell exclusively to handle excise cases.
“The delay in getting information from the police cyber cell affects our enforcement activities. On many occasions we get to know that the suspect we have been tracking has gone to Andhra Pradesh or other states to procure drugs.
If we get cyber inputs, such as tower location, we can identify the route the peddler is travelling. By the time we get information from the police cyber cell, we lose track of the peddler,” an excise source said.
In Tamil Nadu, Prohibition and Excise Wing of the state police helms the anti-narcotic activities and hence sharing of information has never been an issue. In Kerala also there was a demand to bring the excise enforcement wing under the home department.
This came after the Malappuram hooch tragedy in 2010. However, the state government did not pay any heed to it.