Chandigarh: Stating that seaports of Gujarat and Maharashtra seemed to have emerged as the new route to smuggle drugs into India, Punjab police on Monday said that in the past two months alone, the state police had recovered 185.5 kg heroin smuggled via seaports of the two states named above.
Inspector general of police (IGP), headquarters, Sukhchain Singh Gill said that the consignments of the narcotic were supposed to be delivered in Punjab.
Elaborating further, Gill said that in the latest haul, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (earlier known as Nawanshahr) police had recovered on Sunday 38 kg heroin that had apparently entered India via the sea route of Gujarat, from a truck coming from Bhuj in Gujarat.
He held that two persons were arrested in the case and this recovery was in addition to the 13.51 kg heroin recovered in the state last week, taking the weekly cumulative quantity of heroin to 51.51 kg, the IGP added.
Earlier, in a joint operation with anti-terrorist squad (ATS), Gujarat, on July 12, Punjab Police recovered 75 kg heroin from a container at Mundra port in Gujarat, while, in a similar operation with Maharashtra police on July 15, 72.5 kg heroin was recovered from a container at the Nhava Sheva port in Mumbai.
The IGP further said that Punjab police had arrested 370 drug smugglers or suppliers after registering 283 first information reports (FIRs) under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act across the state in the past one week.
Apart from recovering a big-haul of heroin, the police had also recovered Rs 1.09 crores of drug money, 13 kg opium, 12 kg ganja, seven quintals of poppy husk, and 1.36 lakh intoxicant pills/capsules/injections/vials among other drugs after carrying out cordon and search operations in drug-affected areas and setting up nakas at vulnerable routes across the state.
Meanwhile, the director general of police (DGP), Punjab, Gaurav Yadav, has also directed the police officers to effectively forfeit the property of all the arrested drug smugglers.
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