Delhi-based drug cartel now targeting postal dept to smuggle drugs

C Shivakumar/Prince Jebakumar

Chennai:

Drug traffickers are now targeting Indian postal department to smuggle
drugs to international destinations.

Although smuggling of drugs through private courier companies has been
happening but the failed bid to smuggle 2kg of pseudoephedrine and 100
g heroine by Delhi based international drug cartel has resulted in
Narcotics Control Board in Chennai trying to study the new phenomenon.

Prem Anand Sinha, South Zonal Director of Narcotics Control Bureau,
told Express that smuggling of drugs through courier or parcels is not
new. “We have come across several cases where the Delhi based
international drug cartel has been trying to smuggle drugs from
southern cities using the private courier companies. No we are
studying this phenomenon where the postal department is being
targeted. We are trying to find out where it gets accumulated or where
the collection centre is,” says Sinha.

Even the postal department has been caught unaware with the sudden
phenomenon. “This is the first time that such a thing has been
happening,” said a postal employee who oversees the mail operations.

Sinha says that NCB is trying to create awareness among the postal
employees. “We are already providing training to CISF and airport
staff besides creating awareness among private couries companies. Now
we will try to sensitise postal employees,” he says.

He said in most of the cases, it is an African national, who will
visit the cities which finds it safe and then uses the courier or
parcel service to smuggle in the drugs.

The courier companies or the postal department should be more careful
and also reason on why these nationals are sending routine items
through courier which is readily available in the destinations to
which the courier is marked.

Interestingly, drug trafficking has become a industry as the operators
try to smuggle it through fancy handbags or inside the cloth. “Most of
them traffickers are now using machines to package it in such a way
that evades the enforcement authorities. Of the five packages, one or
two may be caught,” he says.

Trafficking of heroin is largely carried on by a array of cartels such
as the D-Company, the Nigerian, the Afghan and the Kenyan syndicates
who work in conjunction with each other