Indian hand in big heroin haul

The 1,400 kg heroin capture from the Panamanian ship MV Hennry, caught off Porbandar in Gujarat recently has bared the extent of the network. The captain of the ship, Suprit Tiwari, was on the run not only from the authorities but also from his Iranian employer. It is believed that the original input for the ship-chase came from “phone chatter”, picked up by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) in the Arabian Sea. From the intercepts, it appeared the young captain who was of Indian origin had decided to strike a side deal with one Vishal Yadav, a drug dealer in Mumbai, for a commission of Rs 50 crore. The original plan made by his employer — a Dubaibased Iranian Sayeid Ali Morani — was to take the narcotic shipment to Egypt. But Tiwari had other plans to make a killing by duping his employer. It was a smart piece of work by the Indian authorities that led to the heroin consignment being captured. Reports say that as soon as the NTRO intercepted the satellite phone conversations, a crisis centre was set up in Delhi and intelligence officials from 12 locations in Gujarat and three analysts got down to the job.

There were two lines of apprehension—one, there was no guarantee that the ship was not being used in terror activities especially when it came via Pakistan. The second was to avoid a repeat of the 2014 New Year’s Eve incident when the Coast Guard claimed that an explosives-laden Pakistani boat had blown itself up in the sea, when asked to surrender. Differing accounts of the incident has caused embarrassment to the government. Concerns grew further after Tiwari deliberately damaged the vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS), and switched off the ship’s satellite phone, so that Morani would not know its location. Over the next 20 hours, a Coast Guard Dornier aircraft conducted a sea-air coordinated search with two helicopters and two vessels, finally accosting the MV Hennry 400 nautical miles off the Porbandar coast. Eleven persons — eight crew of the ship, including Tiwari, and three others — were arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). According to NCB officials, Pakistani loaders had worked four days to hide the consignment of 1,526 packets of heroin in various cavities, water tanks and pipes.