21 more booked in Swabi for growing poppy

SWABI, April 13: Police booked 21 more people for cultivating poppy and destroyed the crop over 258 kanals in Naranji area of the district, said officials here on Wednesday. They said that fresh cases against poppy growers were registered in Kalu Khan police station. After the fresh cases the number of people booked for poppy cultivation reached to 84, they added. Police had registered FIRs against 63 farmers and landowners on Feb 19 during the first operation against poppy cultivation in the area. The second operation was conducted on Tuesday wherein 21 more poppy growers were booked and the crop on 258 kanals was destroyed, officials said. It was learnt that only three of the alleged poppy growers were arrested while the rest of them managed to escape. Officials were not clear as to how those people would be handled. "Reason for not taking prompt action against the farmers and landowners is that none of them resisted destruction of their poppy crop and the entire operation was conducted in peaceful atmosphere," an official said. Meanwhile, principals and headmasters of various public sector educational institutions said that they were faced with shortage of textbooks at beginning of new academic year. The provincial government has been providing free textbooks to students and usually heads of institutions place their demand in advance. However, teachers and heads of both boys and girls schools said here on Wednesday that they submitted demand in advance but despite that they could not get books due to unknown reasons. A headmaster said when they came to know about shortage of class 6th books they collected old books from students and distributed the same among new comers. However, if heads of schools did not collect old books from students after annual examinations they would certainly face shortage of books, he said. The students and parents face a lot of problems due to non-availability of course books, published by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board. "The free books printed by the textbook board are not available in the market," they said. "I visited the markets of the entire district but could not find class 6th textbooks for my son. The book sellers said that books would be provided by the government," said Jamil Khan of Maneri Bala.