New Delhi: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Saturday made the “largest ever” drugs seizure of 2,500 kg of “high-purity” methamphetamine, priced worth Rs 15,000 crore, off the Kerala coast. A Pakistani national was detained in the joint raid by the drugs agency and the Indian Navy, officials said. The seizure was part of ‘Operation Samudragupt’ targeting maritime drug trafficking originating from Afghanistan.
The methamphetamine has been sourced from the ‘Death Crescent’ and is valued at Rs 15,000 crore in Indian waters. This is the first time an Indian agency has intercepted a “mother ship” carrying drugs.
“2,500 kg methamphetamine was seized off the Kerala coast in a joint operation by NCB and Indian Navy. This is the largest ever seizure by any drug enforcement agency in India. The market value of the drugs is around Rs 15,000 crore and the consignment was caught in Indian waters; it was heading for Sri Lanka. A total of three boats were apprehended, and two managed to escape under the cover of darkness,” NCB’s deputy director-general Sanjay Singh told CNN-News18.
The NCB suspects the boat to be of Pakistani origin. Officials said this was the third major seizure via the southern route over the past year and a half.
According to a press release, the NCB and the intelligence wing of the navy got inputs about the movement of a “mother ship” carrying a massive quantity of methamphetamine from the Makran coast. Mother ships are big sea-going vessels carrying large quantities of contraband for distribution to receiving vessels on the route.
The press release stated that the agencies mobilised their assets and kept a close watch over the inputs. The continuous intelligence collection and analysis resulted in the identification of a highly probable route to be taken by the mother ship. The details of this were shared with the navy following which it deployed a ship in the vicinity, it said.
Based on these inputs, the navy intercepted a large sea-going vessel and recovered 134 sacks of narcotics. The seizure and a Pakistani national were brought to the Mattancherry wharf in Cochin and handed over to the NCB, which said it initiated a seizure procedure and found that all the packets contained methamphetamine.
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