Kolkata Cartel: The Great Drug Bust

The successful coordination is being held up as one of the finest examples of ‘‘real-time sharing of information’’ and follow-up action in the crusade against drug trafficking. The discovery is sensational in more senses than one.

» It is the first-ever discovery of a manufacturing facility in India for synthetic amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). ATS is described as one of the latest fads among drug addicts.
» It is the first-ever Chinese-led drug trafficking operation to reach Kolkata.
» It is the first-ever detection of a drug syndicate with truly global dimensions, with links between Chinese, American, Myanmarese and Indian nationals having been established beyond doubt.

To cap it all, the Kolkata chapter of the operation was traced to the ground floor flat of a house belonging to Upen Biswas, a retired additional director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s federal police.

The Sunday Express talked to a host of people and agencies to piece together the sequence of events that led to this remarkable breakthrough. Inquiries show that the operation against the drugs cartel was sponsored primarily by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which took the Chinese and Hong Kong law enforcement agencies into confidence for the first time, and then subsequently involved Indian counterparts.

US government sources said that the Chinese drug lord, Kin Chu Eng Wang, had been running his syndicate for ‘‘exporting’’ heroin to American destinations for over three years. The racket was worth millions of dollars.

The first breakthrough for the DEA and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation came on January 3 with the arrest of several of Wang’s gang members in New York together with the seizure of large quantities of heroin. The DEA and FBI followed up by planting agents disguised as customers in China and Hong Kong to flush out the key operatives of the gang. In an operation codenamed ‘Operation City Lights’ by the DEA, law enforcement agencies in China and Hong Kong cracked down on the establishments on May 16 and rounded up seven key members, including Kin Wang. Their interrogation led to a near-simultaneous raid in New York, where 10 members of the syndicate were trapped.

And then emerged the Kolkata connection. The information was passed on to the Narcotics Control Bureau, an agency under the Union finance ministry, and the raids were conducted at CG-22, Salt Lake, the house of Mr Biswas.

The Kolkata raid yielded 24 kg of ephedrine hydrochloride — the key ingredient for production of synthetic ATS tablets — together with laboratory equipment. Of the five arrested, two were Chinese and three Myanmarese nationals. Four cell phones were seized, all procured with the help of two fake passports and three driving licences.

But San Niang Thanga, to whom Biswas had let out the house, was missing. Thanga, the key agent for the Chinese drug cartel in Kolkata and the north-eastern sates, has since gone into hiding.

Niang Thanga, who had identified himself as a Mizo during the house-rent transactions, turned out to be a Myanmarese. Interrogation of Thanga’s wife Gloria Remi and brother-in-law Zolliang in Shillong by Customs officials revealed that all of them were Myanmarese nationals, though settled in the north-east for a long time. The Mizoram police is now checking to see if Thanga has a crime record. Meanwhile, the Myanmarese government has been alerted and urged to look for Thanga.

The inquiries into the Kolkata chapter of the drug drama have brought out interesting facts. NCB officials said that the efforts to set up a sophisticated ATS-manufacturing unit in Kolkata could be traced to October 2002, when the Chinese druglord came here on a recce mission along with other members of the gang and put up in a hotel on Mahatma Gandhi Road for about 20 days. He came back once again in April and reportedly stayed for four days in Biswas’s flat, according to interrogation of the accused.

Some chemical experts are learnt to have accompanied him but it is yet to be ascertained if the two Chinese nationals arrested in the raid were the chemical experts in the team.

However, according to sources, it was Niang Thanga who had been coordinating every move in Kolkata — including travel, accommodation and food — for the gang members after he shifted to Biswas’s house on February 17.

The arrested men have reportedly told the investigators that they received $2500 each on arrival in Kolkata and were promised more once production and despatch of ATS consignments began from the Kolkata unit.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the West Bengal police, which has involved itself in the case, has secured police remand of the gang members. However, CID officers said it has been difficult to get information out of them because of the language barrier. The CID has roped in Chinese interpreters conversant in Mandarin, the only language that the arrested are said to be responding to.

But the police had no problems sussing out six huge parcels, which arrived for Thanga the day after the gang was busted. The parcels, according to NCB officials, had specially designed containers for chemical processing. It came through an international courier service and the sender was traced to a place close to Beijing.

Even the cellphones were a giveaway to the gang’s international connections. The numbers called and those received included countries like China, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, and virtually all the north-eastern states of India.

‘‘It is truly international. The facilities being set up in Kolkata were obviously aimed at exporting the drugs. Such facilities were available only in places like Thailand and Myanmar earlier. It is an outstanding breakthrough,’’ says an US official in Kolkata.

The NCB officials further say that drug-addicts in the north-east as well as in the South-East Asian countries are increasing going in for synthetic stimulants like ATS tablets. Earlier, China reportedly used to manufacture a herbal version of the ATS, officials say, but synthetic ATS is said to be an easier bet so far as mass production is concerned. Preliminary investigation by NCB officials also shows that the synthetic version of the drug yields phenomenal profit margins.

The seizures and arrests have led to the other big question: Is Kolkata now a key conduit for drug trafficking. The eastern zonal director of the NCB avoids a direct answer to the question, but there is growing evidence of Kolkata’s growing eminence in the drug smuggling map.

Not long before the Biswas breakthrough, towards the end of April, around 75,000 ATS tablets were seized at Imphal airport. The consignment was found in a Kolkata-Silchar-Imphal passenger aircraft. It is now believed to have travelled to Imphal from Kolkata, hinting at the existence of ATS manufacturing units in the city other than the one that was dismantled in Salt Lake. Drug control officials say the ATS tablets were presumably meant for the Moreh border point in Manipur for onward shipment to Myanmar.

There is more. In October 2002, just when the Chinese gang was scouting for contacts in and places to operate from Kolkata, the NCB’s eastern zonal unit claimed to have seized a record 53.3 kgs of heroin from a house in BJ block in Salt Lake. Ansarul Rahaman was arrested in this connection. But for reasons unknown, the NCB fought shy of disclosing details about the huge seizure and kept it absolutely low key. Sources say the consignment would not be worth less than Rs 50 crore in the international market.

Again in April this year, the CID seized a consignment of 2.3 kgs of pure heroin, which landed in the outskirts of Kolkata through the riverine route. Raj Kanojia, DIG, CID, West Bengal, says that the consignment arrived on a foreign ship, from where it was transfered to some country boats. Five people were arrested when they were carrying the stuff to the southern outskirts of Kolkata. Kanojia says that earlier, Kolkata and other urban centres in the state had a tradition of cannabis addiction. ‘‘It will take more evidence to conclude if there is any change in the trends,’’ feels Kanojia.

But be it the international land borders between West Bengal and Bangladesh, the vast unmanned riverine channels in the Bay of Bengal, or the aerial links, none of the law enforcing agencies disputes Kolkata’s potential to develop as a hub for multi-national crime syndicates, be that in drugs or in other contraband.

As a senior BSF official explains, the rail and road links from Kolkata take one virtually to the zero point on the international boundry. Besides, the anonymity of Kolkata probably helps in the spiral in clandestine operations.

Now the anonymity may have gone forever. For years, the Cali drug cartel has run Colombia’s biggest contraband empire. Now Kolkata, the City of Kali, has found a place on the same map.