The government’s crackdown against drug peddling across Jammu and Kashmir is being welcomed by people everywhere. From villages to towns and cities, there is a visible sense of relief among families who have spent years watching drugs slowly destroy the lives of young boys and girls. Parents who once feared seeing their children fall into addiction now feel that at least some serious effort is finally being made. Drug peddlers are being arrested regularly, narcotics are being seized, and in several cases, properties believed to have been built through the drug trade are being confiscated or demolished. For many ordinary people, this crackdown feels necessary because the damage caused by drugs in Kashmir has become impossible to ignore.
Nobody can deny the pain that drug addiction has brought into society. Every locality today seems to know a family affected by it. There are mothers who stay awake the entire night waiting for their addicted sons to return home safely. There are fathers who silently sell their savings to pay for treatment. There are young people whose lives were full of promise, but who lost themselves to substances before even understanding what was happening to them. So when people see action being taken against those involved in the drug trade, they naturally support it.
But while the fight against drugs is important, something else happened recently that should make society pause and think about the kind of people we are becoming.
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In Anantnag, a woman accused of peddling drugs was arrested. The arrest itself became a major topic of discussion, not only because she was accused of involvement in the drug trade, but because she was a woman. And this is where things took an ugly turn.
Instead of allowing the law to take its course, social media turned the entire incident into content. Her face was circulated everywhere. People edited her pictures, shared them repeatedly, and according to reports, some even used AI tools to manipulate and recreate her images just to attract views, likes, and comments. What should have remained a legal matter became public humiliation.
The saddest part is that this kind of reaction is rarely seen when male drug peddlers are arrested. Across Jammu and Kashmir, the overwhelming majority of those arrested in drug-related cases have been men — young men, middle-aged men, older men. Their faces do not usually become material for mockery on social media in the same way. But because this accused person was a woman, many people suddenly felt free to insult, taunt, and degrade her publicly. The discussion moved away from the crime itself and became centred on shaming her identity as a woman.
That is deeply disturbing.
No doubt, drug peddling is a serious crime. A person involved in spreading drugs is harming society and destroying lives. There should be accountability, and the law must act firmly. But even then, an accused person does not stop being a human being. Somewhere in all this online noise, people forgot that basic fact. There is a difference between supporting justice and enjoying someone’s humiliation.
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What social media often forgets is that behind every accused person there is also a family. There may be parents reading those comments in silence. There may be children who will grow up seeing those edited pictures online. There may be sisters, brothers, or relatives carrying the social burden of something they themselves never did. In sensitive cases involving women, public shaming can become even more dangerous in a society like ours, where reputation and honour are treated so harshly.
The use of AI to manipulate her images makes the situation even more frightening. Technology today is powerful enough to damage someone’s dignity within minutes. A photograph can be edited, exaggerated, and spread across thousands of phones before the truth even has a chance to breathe. People sit behind screens treating another human being’s downfall as entertainment. For a few likes, a few comments, and temporary online attention, somebody’s humanity is reduced to a joke.
This is not how a healthy society behaves.
A society should fight crime strongly, but it should also protect human dignity strongly. Both things can exist together. Supporting a crackdown on drugs does not mean we must become emotionally numb or cruel. We cannot claim to care about saving society while at the same time celebrating the public destruction of another human being.
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And perhaps the most important thing people forget is that human beings can change. Life has surprised us many times. People who once made terrible mistakes have rebuilt themselves and returned to society as better individuals. Rehabilitation, repentance, and second chances are not weaknesses of society. They are signs of humanity. If we permanently destroy every person socially before the courts even finish their work, then what space are we leaving for reform?
The government must continue acting firmly against the drug menace. Society supports that fight and should continue to do so. But society also needs to rethink the way it reacts, especially online. Justice should never become a public circus. Crime should be condemned, but humiliation should not become entertainment.
At the end of the day, the real test of a society is not only how strongly it punishes wrongdoing, but also how much humanity it manages to preserve while doing so.
