Infotech companies, BPOs and top of the line professional colleges are not the only ones that seem to be drawn to Navi Mumbai, the satellite city is fast developing as a counter weight to the country’s financial and entertainment capital. With seven drug busts last year, the city of 14 lakh people — many of them well-heeled professionals and students — could also be emerging as a prime target for drug peddlers, the police fear.
“Navi Mumbai has a lot of BPOs, KPOs. Also, the city has a booming IT industry and has IT parks. These places are ideal places for drug peddlers to find customers,” says Navi Mumbai Crime Branch DCP Amar Jadhav, whose team caught a Nigerian in connection with a drug case outside a mall in Vashi in January. “These sectors face tremendous work pressure and taking drugs gives quick relief to these professionals.”
The cyber city also has several engineering, medical, fashion and hotel management colleges and they seem to figure high on the radar of drug pushers as well, he said. Residents say that rising affluence levels and a change in the demographics of the city was only adding to the problem.
A recent socio-economic study conducted for CIDCO said that professionals were finding Navi Mumbai more and more attractive to work and live in. While professionals make for about 40 per cent of the city’s population, 21 per cent are skilled workers and a mere 18 per cent are into business. The city, incidentally, has a literacy rate of 98 per cent.
Statistics from the MIDC, which runs the Millenium Park in Mahape, show that the 22 lakh sq ft area earmarked for IT and related sectors houses about 200 IT firms, 11 BPOs and 4 KPOs. About 15,000 people are employed here.
Raosaheb Shinde, DCP-Zone 1 of Navi Mumbai, whose jurisdiction covers most IT companies in the city, says: “People in IT and related sectors, especially BPOs, face tremendous work pressure. After work, they just let go which sometimes leads to disasters, like irresponsible driving.”
Psychotherapist Dr Ajay Tamhane says he gets about five patients in a month from IT and allied sectors. “People in these sectors are more prone to addictions like smoking and drugs because the work pressure in this industry is so high. Cut-throat competition and pressure to achieve targets add to the stress,” he says.
The rate at which BPO employees are getting hooked to various addictions is even higher, say some doctors. Explains Dr Anand Nadkarni, a corporate trainer who conducts workshops at BPOs and IT firms: “Most BPO employees suffer from both kinds of stress — physical and mental. To relieve their stress they resort to addictions like smoking and drugs.” He says the fact that many youngsters who don’t complete their education before taking up a well-paying job in the BPO sector find growth limited in a few months. “That further frustrates the person,” Nadkarni says.
“We keep a close watch on places like IT parks, colleges and other vulnerable areas,” adds DCP Jadhav. “Apart from tip-offs, our crime branch and the local police are also active in getting information which has proved to be very useful in arrests.”
Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Ramrao Wagh said the strategy to fight the drug menace was simply to come hard on peddlers.
Although the city police had busted seven cases in the last one year, investigations in many cases were weak as they were quite technical, leading to cases falling flat in the courts. To prevent this, policemen were trained by lawyers and experts a few months back to draft strong chargesheets, Wagh added.
Navi Mumbai police has also appointed lawyers on contract basis to help them file strong charge-sheets.