Drug seizure doubles at airports across the country
NEW DELHI: From hiding it in cricket thigh pads, talcum powder boxes and false cavity baggages to taping it to the body, drug smugglers have tried every trick under the sun to evade checks at the airports. Notwithstanding the innovative ways smugglers are coming up with and the growing list of new illegal substances, drug seizures have doubled this year.
A CISF official said, as compared to the 10 drug seizures in 2017, this year has already seen 20 seizures, which include cocaine, pseudoephedrine, opium flower powder and ganja. An official with the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is responsible for security of airports, said the narcotic control bureau who was conducting intensive training of its staff to help them identify drugs concealed in hand and check-in baggage.
“We have enhanced our skill to catch drug smugglers, and NCB has helped us in that. As a result, we have been able to catch more smugglers this year and even in cases, where concealment was difficult to find, we managed to recover them,” said MA Ganapathy, ADG (airport) of CISF.
CISF’s latest big catch came on September 24 at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) when they caught an Istanbul-bound passenger carrying 130,000 tablets of Tramadol, a pain relief drug that is banned in India, weighing about 64 kg.
Tramadol is known to have been frequently used by several terrorist group, giving it names such as Jihad Pill/ISIS drug/ Fighter drug. In the Middle East, each pill is worth $5.
“In 2017, of the 10 cases, one each was from Delhi, Imphal, Mumbai, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Nagpur, Bangalore and Chennai airport while two cases were detected at Cochin airport.
“This year, Delhi has already reported seven cases while Mumbai and Bangalore have reported two cases each. Airports in northeast and south India are also being used by smugglers,” said another CISF officer.
An analysis by security agencies has also revealed that pseudoephedrine, also known as ‘party drug’, is being widely used in the manufacture of medicines, especially cough syrups.
An NCB official said women from African countries have become the latest carrier to smuggle the ‘party drug’.