BENGALURU: Cocaine trafficking in India is taking alarming proportions with traffickers using every possible route, means and mules to deliver the contraband narcotic drug to the market on the eve of the New Year festivities.
Bengaluru is fast emerging as a big market for banned narcotic and synthetic drugs. In perhaps the first of its kind seizure, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Bengaluru last week seized 99 capsules of cocaine weighing two kgs from a ‘body packer’ - a Nigerian national, who had ingested the contraband drug worth over Rs 20 crore in the international grey market for ‘safe passage’.
According to sources, on credible inputs, the DRI, on December 11, intercepted the Nigerian (43), at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), who had travelled on the Ethiopian Airline from Addis Ababa to Bengaluru on a medical visa. “He has come to India on a medical visa for treatment of lung sarcoidosis. He was taken for medical extraction where he ejected 99 capsules of cocaine weighing two kgs. On December 15 he was arrested under the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985,” said sources.
“This is perhaps one of the biggest seizures of cocaine being smuggled by a body packer in India,” they added. Body packing involves the smuggling of drugs with high street value like heroin or cocaine by mules, who voluntarily or by coercion swallow capsules of drugs to avoid being caught by law enforcers. They take medications to slow the movement of substances through the digestive tract until the capsules are retrieved medically. “Africans coming to India with ingested cocaine capsules is a recent trend. Earlier women from South America were being used as body packers,” said sources.
Of late, after a drastic reduction in opium poppy production in Afghanistan following the ban on its cultivation by the Taliban administration last year, cocaine has overtaken heroin smuggling internationally.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium cultivation fell throughout Afghanistan, slashing its supply by 95 per cent. “In comparison to heroin, instances of cocaine smuggling have increased since 2022,” said sources.