Latest news with #NarcoticsBureau
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
‘Massive drug operation take down' yields drugs, guns, nearly half a million in cash
A 'massive drug operation' busted by police recovered several firearms, drugs, and nearly half a million dollars in cash. [DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Whitehall Police Department posted on social media on Tuesday that their Narcotics Bureau and SWAT Team had 'dismantled' a major drug operation. The police were looking to take down a known drug trafficker. Multiple search warrants were executed across the region, according to the post. TRENDING STORIES: Hooters abruptly closes 30 locations Local high school '1 step closer' to winning state softball championship Can you help? Police looking for missing 24-year-old woman Whitehall Police uncovered 1,169 grams of cocaine, 147 grams of fentanyl, 380 oxycodone pills, four firearms, and $475,307 in cash. 'This operation is a huge victory in the fight against the drug trade in Whitehall. It's a clear message: we're committed to keeping our streets safe and taking down those who threaten our community,' a spokesperson for the Whitehall Police Department said in the social media post. [SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Mint
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Social reform amidst a sea of poppies
Vivek Chaudhary's I, Poppy is a ruminative film on poppy cultivation and the insidious way the process in India is tied to exploitation more than growth. It throws light on government policies, which issues licences for opium poppy cultivation and buys back the produce at Centre-decided rates, and outlines the helplessness of farmers and their vulnerability to corruption. The filmmaker, however, inspects the social malaise through a personal dynamic. At the heart of I, Poppy lies Vardibai, a Rajasthan-based poppy farmer and her iron-willed, schoolteacher son, Mangilal. There is a world of difference between them. Vardibai is old and unlettered; the middle-aged Mangilal is the first educated member in the family. She spends her time tending to poppy flowers; her son either talks over the phone indoors or rousingly speaks to farmers outside. They are Dalits but differ in their responses to injustice. Vardibai is passive to the aggressive money-making tactics by corrupt officers where licences are revoked at will; Mangilal mobilises crowds to fight against manipulation of farmers. She discourages him from protesting but he carries on, as if, fed on the very crop they sow, he is intoxicated to the idea of social reform. I, Poppy, with its intimate title, offers a sobering portrait of a rebel and the cost of his rebellion. Shot over four years, it underscores the loneliness that comes with it and by insisting activism to be a full-time job, also questions its feasibility in a dissent-averse country like India. The film premiered and won the best international feature at Hot Docs, marking a consecutive win for an Indian protest documentary at the Canadian documentary festival. Last year, Nishtha Jain's Farming the Revolution secured the coveted honour. Prior to the announcement, Chaudhary spoke about his journey. Edited excerpts from an interview. How did you find Mangilal and Vardibai? I lived in western Rajasthan where opium addiction is a culture. Growing up, I have seen elders have this brown liquid while we drank milk. Opium can be a deadly drug but is also a benign pain relief medication. At some point, I got fascinated with poppy and in 2017, researched and realised how potent the crop is. Multiple factors—the Narcotics Bureau, the black market, people who require morphine for palliative care—try controlling it for vested interest. It started out as a bigger story and at some point, became too big which came with safety issues. We scaled it down by going back to the source where it is grown. In 2018, I shot with three families for a whole season (70-80 days for six months). But they ended up being scared to be on camera for a story like this. We were in a fix. Then at a protest, I met Mangilal. Initially we did not like him because he talked too much (laughs). We were also looking for someone older like a quintessential Rajasthani farmer. On a whim Mangilal asked us to come home and meet his mother. We agreed. His mother didn't consider our presence. From the moment she saw her son, she started scolding him for being late. She kept saying, 'you will be killed. Don't do this". I asked if we could shoot, and when we did, the presence of the camera almost had no effect on them. I realised it was a great story. The fact that they are from the Dalit community informs their resistance. But it appears that you had not set out to explore it. Absolutely. When I was looking for families to shoot with, I was taken only to villages where upper caste people lived. Lower caste people live tucked away and our attempts to talk to them were thwarted by village heads. Access was difficult. But when I met Mangilal and his mother, I was struck by the dynamic they shared. We tried not overplaying their caste. There is one reference at the 60-minute mark but there are many references to (B.R.)Ambedkar. His portraits adorn their house and Mangilal wears the Ambedkar blue. Mangilal was associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party in fringe capacity 10 years ago. Later, he read books about Ambedkar and realised that he walked a certain way into the world because of that man. Vardibai resists fighting bigger battles because she has grown up in a world where untouchability was rampant. She wants to protect whatever space she has. You shoot them differently, opting for static framing for Vardibai and more frenetic shots for Mangilal. Our visual treatment became clearer while writing the several applications to procure funding. Mustaqeem Khan, the cinematographer, and I decided on the filmmaking intuitively. Since Vardibai spends most of her time in the field, we put the camera on a tripod. Mangilal has this relentless pace. A million thoughts go inside his head so we had to be ready. The film interprets the social reality the poppy farmers are in through the difficult relationship between Mangilal and his mother. Yet, a sense of boundary comes through in the way you have shot them. For instance, we never see Mangilal in his room. His wife remains absent till she appears in one scene but her face is obscured. His sons appear much later. Was this due to limited access? During shooting, we stayed at their house. They cleared the storage room and put out two cots for us. There was a connection, especially between me and Mangilal. In a way, both of us are stuck because of who we are as people. If he was not an activist, he would go on with his life, and if I was not a documentary filmmaker, I would invest my time and energy somewhere else, and not keep going back to making films where there is nothing, financially speaking. Even with his mother, I could converse freely because I speak the language. We got a rhythm of their lives. Mangilal and his wife have a difficult relationship and although we shot with her, we both felt uncomfortable. Initially, when his sons and he argued or fought, Mustaqeem and I stayed in our room. It felt wrong to intrude. Little over a year later, we asked Mangilal if we could shoot and he instantly agreed. He could sense the film we were making. There was a push and pull in the filmmaking because a family dynamic had formed. 'I, Poppy' ends on a solemn note. Given that this is a film about a man standing up against a mammoth system that will only continue, when did you decide to stop filming? During the shooting, we got a sense that Mangilal's steps were becoming bigger. He was mobilising larger crowds and something was waiting to give. Either he will win, which is the story everyone wants to see, or he won't. Since this is India, one has to find that happy ending. This is why we give him a hero-like shot at the end. There could not have been a definite resolution but we wanted to see where things go. At the end, when the rain destroys their crops, it seemed like an appropriate point to stop. They won but they also lost. Ishita Sen Gupta is an independent film critic and culture writer. Her work is informed by gender and pop culture. Also read: How to make evacuation drills accessible for the disabled
South China Morning Post
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Peter Yung's The System, a rediscovered gem of Hong Kong New Wave cinema
From a darkened first-floor shop window, the zoom lens picks up the lean, sallow-faced figure loitering on the opposite pavement. Seemingly invisible to passers-by and shopkeepers, he is a magnet for solitary, middle-aged men who approach in silence, holding HK$10 notes. Advertisement No words are exchanged, but between meetings, he disappears into an open staircase and returns within moments to discreetly hand off small paper packets to more customers who then drift away. This is repeated, again and again, on a daily basis, with the hidden camera capturing every one of the transactions. It's the mid-1970s and Hong Kong is flooded with heroin, home to the highest percentage of addicts in the world. The dealer is Dai So, a street-level Wo Hop To triad selling packets of No 3 heroin from the gang's protected patch on First Street, Sai Ying Pun. He's also an addict, and he knows he is being filmed. His brother, Sai So, keeps a lookout nearby for a rival gang, also selling heroin, a block up, on Second Street. Police officers David Hodson (left) and Ho Shiu-cheong show the press their seizure of heroin in April 1977. Photo: SCMP Archives The team behind the camera are award-winning British filmmaker Adrian Cowell, two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Mengis, and a young local, Peter Yung Wai-chuen, associate producer and camera operator. They would live in that empty shop for five months, filming the street-level drug trade below. They were there making Opium: The White Powder Opera, one in a series of documentaries Cowell wrote and directed on the drug trade over two decades. It was a groundbreaking film as, through his Hong Kong government connections, he received unprecedented access to the secretive Narcotics Bureau as it sought to identify and arrest high-level drug smugglers and break up their syndicates 'I was the organiser for the documentary,' says Yung, now 75, sitting among the greenery of his home on Lantau Island. 'The important thing is, at that time, Caucasians couldn't go on the surveillance, so that's why I came in and became the one to deal with all these Chinese in the gangs.' Advertisement
Hindustan Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Indian documentary 'I, Poppy' bags top award at Canada's Hot Docs
Toronto: An Indian production has won the top award at North America's leading documentary film festival for the second year running. Directed by Vivek Chaudhary, the film I, Poppy, garnered the Best International Feature Documentary award at Hot Docs, in Toronto, on Friday. The film's producers said the film was shot over five years in an 'observational style in the poppy fields of Rajasthan'. 'Going against some powerful forces, both against the opium mafia and the corrupt Narcotics Bureau, the film crew faced considerable challenges but persevered to bring this human story to life,' they added. In a statement, the jury which selected the film for the award, said, 'A film of negotiations – with family, with community, with the systems that limit our choices and bind our fates. For its moving and thoughtfully crafted chronicle of a family navigating conflicts, contradictions and uncomfortable truths, the jury presents the Best International Feature award to I, Poppy.' Since Hot Docs is an Academy Awards qualifying festival for feature documentaries, 'I, Poppy', which is in Hindi and Marwari, will qualify for consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category of the Oscars without the standard theatrical run, provided it complies with Academy rules. Chaudhary's first film, the 45-minute long Goonga Pehelwan or The Mute Wrestler, won the Indian National Film Award for Best Debut Film in 2015. 'I, Poppy' which is 81-minutes in length, is his debut feature documentary. In 2024, the feature, 'Farming The Revolution', from Mumbai-based filmmaker Nishtha Jain, was the winner of the Best International Feature Documentary Award. 'I, Poppy' was one of two Indian productions that had their world premiere at Hot Docs this year. The festival also showcased Marriage Cops, a India-US co-production directed by Shashwati Talukdar and Cheryl Hess, which looked at the Women's Helpline in Dehradun, India, where marriage mediation meets law enforcement in the most unexpected ways. The 2025 edition of Hot Docs presented 113 films from 47 countries. The festival which began on April 24 will conclude on Sunday.
South China Morning Post
29-04-2025
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong police arrest 99 in citywide drug trafficking crackdown
Hong Kong police have arrested 99 people, with the youngest being 13, in a citywide crackdown on drug trafficking this month, seizing 220kg (485lbs) of narcotics worth HK$117 million (US$15 million). Advertisement Senior Inspector Ho Ho-ting, of the Narcotics Bureau said that a series of arrests had been made between April 20 and 26, concluding a citywide operation targeting drug trafficking via the internet and social media platforms 'We will continue to enforce the law with zero tolerance [towards drug trafficking], clamping down on all drug trafficking activities, including those taking place online and on social media,' Ho warned. Among those arrested, 19 were under the age of 21, of which nine were students, while the oldest suspect was 74 years old. The operation involved 68 separate drug-related cases and resulted in the seizure of six types of drugs. These included 51kg of cocaine, 1kg of methamphetamine, 81kg of ketamine, 33kg of heroin, 669 cannabis plants, over 12kg of cannabis, and 899 vials of cannabis oil. Advertisement Officers also discovered various forms of the recently banned drug space oil during the operations. The force confiscated around 1.1 litres (2.2 pints) of liquid etomidate, around 1kg of etomidate powder, and about 2,490 space oil capsules. 'The amount of etomidate powder and liquid seized could produce an additional 12,000 space oil capsules,' Ho said.
