Cracking down further on the big fish in the drugs trade, the Punjab Police on Sunday said it has arrested four persons, who were using the courier services route to smuggle drugs abroad.
The Police said that drug racket is an international module of drug smugglers reportedly controlled from Canada.
The Police also said these arrests have exposed an international drugs syndicate, which was found to be controlling the module that was involved in smuggling Opium and the potent date rape drug Ketamine.
The arrested persons have been identified as Canadian Davinder Nirwal alias Dev (68), Ajit Singh alias Jeet (45) of village Jaitewali in Jalandhar, Tarlochan Singh (42) of same village in Jalandhar and Gurbax Singh (50) of village Katthe in Hoshiarpur.
Additional Inspector General Counter Intelligence H K P S Khakh, who had been chasing the Canadian, DavinderDev, said the racket was found to be masterminded by Canadian citizens, Kamaljit Singh Chauhan, who hails from village Nagar in Jalandhar, and Dev, who is a resident of Ganganagar in Rajasthan, and currently residing at Khanna in Ludhiana.
Dev, a big name in the drug smuggling world, had been under close watch by the Enforcement Directorate and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), said Khakh, who strategised the joint operation undertaken by the Counter Intelligence Wing and District Police Jalandhar Rural.
The police have seized the 4.75 kilograms of costly drug ketamine and six kilograms of opium, neatly packed in double layered seven big cooking bowls (Cauldron), basically used for preparations of Langar (community kitchen) material.
Giving details of the arrests, Khakh said that the joint teams, acting on a tip-off, carried out a special operation on Haripur T-Point near JanduSingha in Jalandhar and arrested the four persons traveling in two different cars.
He added that accused were were carrying seven big cooking bowls, with the drugs hidden in specially made seven big cauldrons transfer to Canada, through a courier company.
The use of private couriers or postal services is a new modus operandi used by global drug smugglers to avoid police and other agencies, he added.
Preliminary investigations have revealed that the consignment was prepared by KamaljitChohan, who visited India in 2017 and fixed a deal with the accused for smuggling of ketamine and opium to Canada.
As per the agreement, Dev and Jeet were to arrange drugs from their Indian sources and pack them properly while Chohan had taken the responsibility to further take the drugs to Canada through courier route which was known only to him.
