Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad claimed to have seized 75.3 kg of heroin, worth Rs 376.5 crore, from a container near Mundra port in Kutch district. An official gave this information on Tuesday. Gujarat Director General of Police Ashish Bhatia said the officers were deported from the United Arab Emirates by hiding them inside rolls of cloth to dodge and were to be taken to Punjab.
The Punjab Police had recently given an information to the Gujarat ATS that a shipping container that arrived at Mundra port about two and a half months ago may contain drugs and the cargo was to be transported to Punjab, Bhatia. told reporters in Gandhinagar. “After getting the basic information, a team of Gujarat ATS along with a sub-inspector of Punjab Police reached Mundra and traced the suspicious container kept at a container freight station near the port. It reached Mundra port on May 13 from Ajman Free Zone in UAE.
He said that on a close inspection of 540 cloth rolls kept in the container, heroin powder was found inside 64 of them. “A cloth was wrapped over a long cylindrical pipe made of cardboard. Drug dealers had made a cavity by putting a large diameter plastic pipe on the cardboard pipe. The heroin was stuffed into the cavity and then sealed tightly using carbon tape so that it would not be detected in the X-ray examination,” the official said.
Bhatia said the ATS seized 75.3 kg heroin of high purity in the international market, estimated to be worth Rs 376.5 crore. The container was to be taken to Punjab, he said, adding that no arrests have been made so far. He said the container was dispatched by a Green Forest General Trading in UAE and it was received by Jovial Container Lines, a delivery agent based in West Bengal, which has an office at Gandhidham in Kutch.
Asked why no action was taken against the Mundra port authorities, Bhatia said it was wrong to point out only one port. “Drug traffickers will use any channel suitable for sending drugs to India. Not just Mundra, we had seized drugs from other ports of Gujarat like Kandla and Pipavav in the recent past. Drugs were seized from Nhava Sheva port in Maharashtra, in Chennai and also in West Bengal,” he said.
The official said that most of the drugs being sent to Gujarat ports have been confiscated due to the vigilance of the state police and other agencies. Various state and central agencies including ATS and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) have seized drugs worth crores of rupees from shipping containers arriving at Gujarat ports from other countries in recent days.
The DRI had seized around 3,000 kg of heroin in September last year, which is believed to have originated from Afghanistan and two containers at Mundra port, valued at around Rs 21,000 crore in global markets. In May, the DRI seized 56 kg of cocaine, worth around Rs 500 crore, from a container near Mundra port.
In April, the DRI seized 205.6 kg of heroin worth Rs 1,439 crore from a container near Kandla port in Kutch. Around the same period, Gujarat ATS and DRI in a joint operation recovered around 90 kg heroin worth Rs 450 crore from a shipping container that arrived from Iran at Pipavav port in Amreli district.
The consignment had to go via Punjab: DGP
Punjab Police said that the consignment seized from Mundra port was to be diverted to some other place via Punjab. DGP Gaurav Yadav said the container in which the drugs were hidden was loaded from UAE’s Jebel Ali port and booked by an importer from Punjab’s Malerkotla. As per the preliminary investigation, the DGP said that since the links of the container have been established with Punjab, the consignment was to be diverted to some other place via Punjab. He said the Punjab portion is being traced and probed.
Yadav said that after the inputs, the State Special Operations Cell of SAS Nagar immediately sent police teams to Gujarat and deployed them at Mundra Port. The searches were carried out with the help of customs, in coordination with the central agency and Gujarat ATS, he said, adding that after following due process and documents, the container was opened, leading to the recovery of a huge amount of 75 kg heroin. .
He said that the consignment was opened in the presence of customs officials and magistrate. Yadav said that to ascertain the backward and forward linkages, some suspicious persons from Malerkotla and Ludhiana found to be connected with the import of this consignment have been called for questioning by the concerned district police.
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