Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Feb 11: The Indo-Pak trade standoff ended tonight with the crossover of 71 trucks stranded on either side of the Line of Control (LoC) at Uri in North Kashmir and the normal trans-LoC trade that was suspended last week will resume tomorrow and Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service will operate from Monday.
The trade was suspended last week after recovery of over 9 kilogram of brown sugar from a Pakistani truck bearing registration number P-9627. The driver of the truck was arrested and the truck seized and a case was registered against him.
Police arrested three persons Zahoor Ahmad Malla alias Raju Trali, Abdul Majid Shalla son of Mohammad Sultan resident of Armpora Baramulla and Mohammad Yusuf Dar son of Mohammad Subhan Dar resident of Dranbal Baramulla. They revealed that the consignment was meant for Punjab drug baron Harjinder Singh alias Happy Singh of Amritsar in Punjab.
A police team was sent to Punjab soon after the drug seizure but they were told by Punjab Police that Harjinder Singh is absconding. Singh’s name also figured in last year’s brown sugar seizure and a police team from Baramulla that went for investigation could not arrest him as he was an absconder last year as well.
The trade and the weekly bus service were suspended after the narcotics seizure. The standoff was resolved today after the Deputy Commissioner Baramulla, Talat Ahmad spoke to his Pakistani counterpart in Muzaffarabad over phone.
The DC said that he spoke to his counterpart in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and both the sides agreed to let the stranded trucks cross to their respective destinations. “It has also been resolved that the normal trade will resume from tomorrow”, he added.
Talat said that Pakistani authorities wanted that the investigations into the case should be expedited and Indian authorities should also share the details of the case with them. “We told them that they should use the diplomatic channels for this. We assured them that the investigation process will be expedited. We also told them that the two drivers will be prosecuted under Indian law as the drugs were recovered here”, he said.
The Deputy Inspector General of Police North Kashmir, Gareeb Dass told Excelsior that 21 Pakistani trucks crossed the LoC towards Pakistan at 11.10 p.m. “Our 5 trucks had also crossed at around 11: 20 p.m. and other were crossing. We are expecting the cross over to complete by midnight”, he added. He said that Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service will also resume its operations from Monday.
This is not for the first time that there was any standoff on the LoC due to recovery of narcotics. On January 17 last year, Police seized 114 packets of brown sugar from a truck (RIS-2137) driven by Mohammad Shafiq of Sarwar Muzaffarabad in Salamabad Uri.
27 Indian trucks along with their drivers were detained by Pakistan and they didn’t allow their own 48 Pakistani trucks and their drivers to return for about three weeks. However, the matter was later resolved by the External Affairs Ministries of both the countries and the trucks and drivers were allowed to cross to their respective countries except the driver from whose truck the brown sugar was recovered.
India and Pakistan started cross LoC trade in Jammu and Kashmir from Uri in Kashmir and Chakan-da-Bagh in Jammu in 2006, a year after Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service was started in April 2005 first time after the partition.
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