Punjab Police, Gujarat ATS joint op: Shipped from UAE, Rs 375 crore heroin seized at Mundra port, was to be routed to Punjab

“As per preliminary investigations, we have established that the container was meant to be delivered to Punjab. Further, we feel that the conatiner would have been routed to some other place via Punjab. A probe has been launched,” Yadav said.

The DGP added that “following inputs about the consignment, Punjab Police’s State Special Operation Cell (SSOC), SAS Nagar, had dispatched teams to Gujarat’s Mundra Port”.

“To ascertain the link of the container to Punjab and to figure where it was headed to from here, some suspects from Malerkotla and Ludhiana who were linked with this consignment have been called for questioning by the concerned district police,” added the DGP.
Meanwhile, an FIR under sections 8C, 21C, 23C, and 29 of the NDPS Act has been registered by ATS Gujarat at ATS Ahmedabad police station.

A joint team of Gujarat anti-terrorist squad (ATS) and Punjab Police raided the container yard (Express photo)

According to police, during a raid at the All Cargo Container Freight Station at Mundra port, 75.30 kilograms of heroin was found hidden among 4,000 kilograms of imported clothing material. According to police, the heroin is valued at Rs 375 crore in the international market and the container was allegedly sourced from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In a press conference on Tuesday, Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) Ashish Bhatia said that they got information from Punjab police about a “suspicious container” lying at the Mundra port for the past two months with narcotics that were meant to be smuggled to Punjab. Acting on it, a joint team of the Gujarat ATS and Punjab Police conducted the raid when the team found a “suspicious” container that was only one-third full. “Usually, the containers are filled to the maximum because of the high cost of transportation. Another suspicious point was that the container had a textile consignment shipped from Dubai. Around 4,000 kg of clothing material rolled in 540 plastic rolls were found,” DGP Bhatia said.

“On removing the clothing, it was found that another plastic pipe was inserted in the roll and narcotics consignments were stored in the gap between the two pipes. A blue carbon cello tape was used over the two pipes in order to avoid scanner detection. As many as 64 out of the 540 rolls contained heroin weighing 75.30 kg worth Rs 376.5 crore. An FSL was held on the spot that confirmed the narcotics,” the DGP added.

According to the DGP, the container was shipped from Ajman Free Zone, UAE, and reached Mundra Port on May 13 this year in a ship named “Manila”.

“The supplier of the container is a company, Green Forest General Trading, registered at Ajman Free Zone, while the delivery agent in India was a West Bengal-registered company ‘Jovial Container Lines’ which also has an office at Gandhidham in Kutch. The Gujarat ATS has registered a case and begun an investigation,” the DGP said.

This is the second major consignment of heroin to be intercepted at Mundra port in less than a year. In September 2021, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) intercepted three containers shipped from Bandar Abbas port in Iran to Mundra that contained around three metric tonnes of heroin worth more than Rs 21,000 crore.

The DRI arrested a couple from Chennai whose firm had officially imported the cargo and a few others before the probe was transferred to the National Investigation Agency.

The drug consignment was destroyed at a facility near Bhachau in Kutch district on June 8 this year with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman monitoring the process virtually from Delhi.