AHMEDABAD: A late-night raid on the Amritsar–Mumbai Golden Temple Mail train reportedly revealed a multi-city, possibly international drug syndicate, after a Mizoram youth was caught with cocaine and methamphetamine worth over Rs 2.19 crore.
The arrest is linked to a Nigerian woman, earlier nabbed in Surat earlier.
Acting on specific intelligence, a joint team of the Railway Protection Force and the Narcotics Control Bureau zeroed in on coach B-4, where a 32-year-old passenger from Mizoram, Lalfakmavia, sat with a backpack and trolley bag that held much more than clothes.
The search revealed that the bag contained 436 grams of cocaine valued at Rs 2.18 crore, 19 grams of Yaba pills, methamphetamine worth Rs 1.50 lakh, five bottles of codeine cough syrup weighing 649 grams, and 8 grams of Alprazolam tablets.
The total value crossed Rs 2.19 crore, elevating the case from a routine interception to a major narcotics bust.
Under sustained questioning, the accused confessed.
He told investigators that he lives in Delhi with his sister and brother-in-law and survives by doing odd household work. He was approached by a Nigerian woman, a friend of his sister, who handed him a packet wrapped as dog food packaging.
“It looked completely normal,” he reportedly told officers, adding that the woman provided Rs 3,000 and travel expenses to deliver the parcel to Mumbai, where an unknown person was to contact him.
That confession fell into place with another arrest made just a day earlier.
On January 24, acting on prior intelligence, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence’s Surat unit had intercepted a Nigerian woman travelling on the same Golden Temple Express from Faridabad to Mumbai.
The search yielded 50 grams of cocaine worth Rs 50 lakh and a massive 900 grams of methamphetamine, taking the value of the seizure to Rs 2.30 crore.
Investigators now believe the two arrests are not isolated accidents but point to a larger, well-oiled supply chain that uses long-distance trains as corridors for high-grade drug transport.
“The pattern, the packaging and the route point to an organised syndicate,” an official said, noting that methamphetamine, described by officers as one of the deadliest synthetic drugs, was common to both cases.
The NCB has registered offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and widened the probe to trace handlers, receivers and financial links.
After being produced before a Special Magistrate in Borivali, Lalfakmavia was taken to Bengaluru on transit remand, even as agencies race to uncover how deep and how far this cross-border narcotics network really runs.