A leader affiliated to the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab was arrested with high quality heroin worth Rs 22 crore in the international market.
NEW DELHI: A leader affiliated to the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab was arrested with high quality heroin worth Rs 22 crore in the international market by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) near Amritsar’s Raja Sansi Airport on Saturday.
Purshottam Lal Sondh (40), the general secretary of the All India Shiromani Youth Akali Dal, the youth wing of the ruling SAD, was intercepted when he was on his way to the airport. Confirming the arrest, a senior DRI official said “investigations are on and nothing more can be revealed at this point of time”.
According to sources, Sondh was carrying the heroin neatly packed inside women’s clothing and covered with a specific material to make it undetectable to X-ray scanners at the airport. During interrogation, Sondh is learnt to have told DRI he was to deliver the consignment to another person at the airport but was not aware of his identity. The “other person” would have taken the consignment abroad, he reportedly said.
Sondh, who is based in Jalandhar, said that he had procured the consignment from a Jalandhar-based man named Surinder Singh, who was later arrested. The officials recovered Rs1.4 lakh in cash and a large quantity of material used to pack heroin from Singh’s home.
The arrest comes at a time when India has been termed a major transit point and destination for heroin and cocaine by the International Narcotics Control Board. The global drug trafficking watchdog’s report says that India’s porous borders were behind the thriving illegal trade in the country.
“The quantity of heroin entering India from Pakistan has increased. Enforcement agencies in the north-west part of India are seizing ever-increasing quantities of heroin originating in Afghanistan and Pakistan and en route to Europe,” the report claims.
It adds, “The smuggling of cocaine into India, while remaining at a modest level, seems to be organised by West African traffickers who exchange South American cocaine for south-west Asian heroin destined for illicit markets in Europe or North America.”
aditya_k@dnaindia.net
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