New Delhi: Liquid cocaine is emerging as a favoured technique for smuggling drugs into India. On Thursday, a 25-year-old Kenyan woman was arrested at Delhi’s Indira Gandi International Airport. She was smuggling approximately Rs 13 crore worth of cocaine dissolved in two whiskey bottles. The accused was coming from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).
Earlier in April, a Tanzanian national was arrested at the Delhi airport for smuggling cocaine by mixing it with whiskey. He, too, arrived from Addis Ababa and was followed from the deboarding gate.
In November last year, a Nigerian man was arrested at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport with two whiskey bottles in which cocaine was dissolved in liquid.
What is liquid cocaine?
Liquid cocaine is made by dissolving the powder using water or other solvents and can later be converted back into a powder form. Cocaine is harder to detect in its liquid form than in its powder form, although this form of smuggling is a rarity, Hindustan Times reported quoting officials.
Cocaine is among the most common drugs of abuse and imaginative techniques of smuggling cocaine through border controls have happened in other countries as well.
How is it detected?
A Narcotics Control Bureau official told The Times of India that the UK and Switzerland have developed two techniques that will help customs officials establish the presence of contraband without opening the bottle.
“Cocaine was ingeniously dissolved in the liquid contained in the said bottles to make it extremely difficult to detect. This is a unique modus operandi busted by the DRI indicating the uphill task faced by the officers on a regular basis to check the drug inflow into the country,” said the official told the newspaper.
