India, May 8 -- In police stations across Jammu and Kashmir, the walls that once bore the faces of wanted militants now display posters of drug peddlers and dealers. Notorious names, such as Huzaif Shabir Dar of Budshahnagar and Basit Ahmad Baba of Qamarwari, have replaced insurgents on the most wanted lists. The shift is stark-and the response is increasingly public.

During the launch of Lieutenant Governor (LG) Manoj Sinha's 100-day drug awareness programme in Jammu on April 11, the initiative was framed as a security and social priority. By early May as it entered the Kashmir Valley, the march had evolved into a mass movement. "Drug trafficking and terror funding are two hands of the same enemy," Sinha said in Budgam on May 5. "The ne...