NEW DELHI: Indian drug lord Tifal Nau Khez, 35, and his associate, an Afghan, have been arrested by Delhi Police from Mumbai and 130 kg of heroin has been seized from them, a senior officer said. Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Cell, Manishi Chandra described Khez as the kingpin of an international narcotics cartel and said the other arrestee, Ahmad Shah Alokozai, 37, was one of his most important Afghan links. Alokozai, a resident of Kandahar city in Afghanistan, was involved in the import of jute bags soaked in heroin.
“After the arrest of Ahmad Alokozai earlier, based on his revelations, a team was dispatched to Mumbai to search for a suspected cargo which was lying somewhere in the vast JNPT Nhava Sheva area of Navi Mumbai,” the DCP said. The team, the officer said, conducted a thorough search of the area in Panvel, Maharashtra.
“A container which was imported by the arrested accused through his contacts in Mumbai from the Bandar Abbas port of Iran was found containing about 260 jute bags with basil seeds. On opening the jute bags, they were found to contain another jute bag covered with a thin, white-coloured polythene layering,” Chandra said.
“The inner jute bag covered with the thin, white-coloured polythene was found containing soaked and dried Afghan heroin. Each bag had approximately 500 gm of pure, raw heroin,” he added. On the directions of Khez’s handlers based in Afghanistan, he had set up a reconstitution factory at a flat in Zakir Nagar in Delhi.
Over the past few days, the total recoveries in an ongoing operation have exceeded 330 kg of narcotics with a value of approximately Rs 1,320 crore in the international market. Delhi Police’s Special Cell has arrested nine persons, including five Afghan nationals.