Howrah City Police organised an awareness programme at Avani Riverside Mall to observe International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26. Popular faces like actors Sourabh Banerjee and Sreeja Sarkar, cricketers Sourashish Lahiri and Laxmi Ratan Shukla, former Indian football captain Satyajit Chatterjee, secretary of Sonata Foundation Pranay Dutta, singer Prajna Dutta, Shantanu Maharaj of Belur Math, Head of Team Taurus Amitava Ray and the COO of Avani Riverside Mall, Subir Das, were a part of this initiative by Howrah City Police Commissioner D.P. Singh. 

Children from schools like Shree Jain Vidyalaya, St Agnes School, MC Kejriwal Vidyapeeth and others participated in this programme. The programme began with felicitation  of the guests with bouquets. 

“We are trying our best to stop children from taking drugs. We want to save as many children and lives as possible. It is difficult but not impossible,” said Singh, on the importance of this day. He added, “The fight against drug abuse is a continuous process. It will take months, even years and not just a day to eradicate it completely from our society.”

Shantanu Maharaj gave an inspiring speech on realisation of the good and the bad and training our minds in the correct way. Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Satyajit Chatterjee and Pranay Dutta gave motivational speeches on ways to fight drug abuse. 

A music album, ‘Aloey Ferar Gaan’, produced by Sonata Foundation and Team Taurus in association with Howrah City Police, was released by the guests. The album that has eight songs, tells stories of people who have been affected by drugs. The music has been composed by Pranay Dutta, Prajna Dutta and Pijush while the lyrics have been penned by Pranay and Prajna. Later, the two artistes performed songs from the album. The programme concluded with distribution of mementos to all the noted guests.