2,500 Kg of methamphetamine seized by navy near Kochi and 8 kg heroine in Kashmir by Army
In a massive drug bust, nearly 2,500 kilogram of methamphetamine worth around Rs 12,000 crore was seized from a vessel in Indian waters along the Kerala coast in by the Navy based on information by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), the anti-drug agency said on Saturday.
The NCB said it was the largest seizure of methamphetamine in the country and a Pakistani national has been detained in connection with it.
Giving details of the seizure at a press conference held here, NCB officials said it was carried out as part of ‘Operation Samudragupt’ which targeted maritime trafficking of drugs originating from Afghanistan.
This is the third major seizure by NCB of maritime trafficking of drugs through the southern route in the last one and a half years, the agency said.
As part of the operation, so far around 3,200 kg of methamphetamine, 500 kg of heroin and 529 kg of hashish has been seized, it said.
The agency claimed that the latest consignment was meant for India, Sri Lanka and Maldives from Afghanistan.
The drug cache had started on a “mother ship” — a large vessel that distributes narcotics to various boats during its journey — from the Makran coast around Pakistan and Iran, it said.
As many as 134 sacks of suspected methamphetamine, the Pakistani national, the intercepted boat and some other items salvaged from the ship were brought to Mattancherry Wharf and handed over by the Navy to the Narcotics Control Bureau, it said. “NCB has initiated the seizure procedures and the primary analysis is that all of the packets contain methamphetamine of high purity,” the NCB said.
Meanwhile in Jammu and Kashmir based on information an inter-state narco terror smuggling syndicate originating from Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) were busted in a joint operation.
Kupwara Police, with help of the Indian Army, have arrested four smugglers involved in running the module.
Acting on a tip-off that a Punjab-based narco smuggler has arrived in the Kupwara district at a pre-decided location to take a consignment of narcotics, a joint search operation by Kupwara Police with help of an army unit was launched in the Zurhama area of PS Trehgam, a police spokesperson said.
During the operation, four persons – Yousuf Bokra son of Suba Bokra, Showkat Ahmad Khatana, Maroof Ahmad Mir and Laba Masih – were arrested, when they were in the process of exchanging smuggled narcotics and cash among themselves.
During the preliminary investigations, it transpired that the narcotic consignment had been sent by two PoJK-based terrorist handlers of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), namely Manzoor Ahmad Mir and Asad Mir, who exfiltrated to PoJK in the early 1990s to join terrorist ranks.
Both Manzoor and Asad, over a period of time, have become terrorist handlers of LeT, mainly acting as launching commanders besides pushing narcotics and weapons to sustain terrorist activities in the UT of J&K.
So far, eight packets of narcotics (heroin-like substances) weighing about eight kilograms along with ₹5 lakhs in Indian currency notes have been recovered from the possession of the arrested persons.
A case under relevant sections of the NDPS Act and UA(P) Act stands registered in Police Station Trehgam. As the investigation is at its initial stage, more arrests and recoveries can’t be ruled out, police sources said.
