Three years ago, this village had a nickname.
Chitte wala Sherpur.
Luxury cars from Chandigarh and Barnala would line up on its streets… not for sweets or saris, but for synthetic drugs. 💉
Today? That nickname is dead.
And the people who killed it weren't cops, ministers, or NGOs.
They were the villagers themselves.
August 2023. Overdose deaths were stacking up in Sherpur, Sangrur.
Balwinder Singh and a handful of young men did something almost no one expected.
They pooled their own money.
Started patrolling the streets 24/7.
And launched the Nasha Roku Committee — a citizen squad with no badges, no salaries, just spine.
The peddlers weren't shadowy outsiders.
They were women. From homes inside the village.
Their husbands had pushed them into the trade — betting that nobody would suspect a housewife of smuggling chitta.
It worked. For a while.
Until their own children started getting hooked.
That's when 47-year-old Jasvir Kaur and other women of Sherpur walked straight into those homes.
Not with police. With conversation.
"We support them in every possible way," Jasvir says.
The peddler-mothers broke. Their kids were sent to rehab. The supply chain inside the village… collapsed.
This wasn't just vigilante energy. It was a system:
The claimed success rate?
97%.
In a state where official data still pegs opioid dependents at over 2.3 lakh, that number hits like a thunderclap. ⚡
Former SSP Sartaj Singh Chahal made it clear: the patrols are legal, voluntary, humanitarian.
Police now act on the committee's tips. The ADC has promised full administrative backing.
A village basically built a parallel anti-drug ecosystem… and the state said thank you.
Sherpur is clean. The dealers moved.
The new hotspot: a settlement behind Barnala bus stand, where chitta is reportedly sold in the open.
The committee tried. They hit a wall of local resistance.
DSP Kulwinder Singh has promised action.
The fight isn't over. It just got a new pin on the map.
Punjab has spent crores fighting chitta with raids, task forces, and headlines.
Sherpur fought it with patrols, aunties, and flour-mill jobs.
And somehow… the villagers won first.
That's all for now!
