DW BUREAU / Amritsar Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav on Thursday said eliminating gangster culture and controlling the drug menace are the top priorities of the state police. The DGP visited Amritsar during the day and offered prayers at the Golden Temple and the Durgiana Mandir. Speaking to the media in Amritsar, Yadav stated that as directed by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, eliminating gangster culture and controlling the drug scourge were the top priorities. The state police is committed to maintain law and order, and peace, he said, asserting that the Punjab Police is one of the best police forces in the world. "We are focusing on basic policing, and we will ensure a people-friendly police," Yadav said. Yadav assumed the charge of the officiating director general of police on July 5 after senior IPS officer V K Bhawra proceeded on a two-month leave.After Yadav took charge, the police force launched anti-drug drives across the state. Within a week, 676 drug peddlers were nabbed and 559 FIRs registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, the police said earlier. Over 75 kilograms of heroin worth Rs 375 crore, hidden in a clothing consignment, was seized from a container stored at Mundra port in Kutch on Monday after a joint team of Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and Punjab Police raided the container yard. According to Yadav, the raid came after the police teams received specific intelligence inputs about heroin being smuggled from the UAE to Punjab. "The contraband was kept concealed in a container of unstitched clothes, using a cardboard pipe that was further camouflaged by an oversized plastic pipe. The container, which was loaded from Jebel Ali port in the UAE, had been booked by an importer from Malerkotla, Punjab," the DGP had said in a written statement. "As per preliminary investigations, we have established that the container was meant to be delivered to Punjab. Further, we feel that the conatiner would have been routed to some other place via Punjab. A probe has been launched," Yadav had said. (editor@dailyworld.in)