HYDERABAD: The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Hyderabad unit, arrested a Tanzanian travelling from Johannesburg to Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport and recovered 1,157 grams of cocaine in the form of capsules that he had ingested for smuggling from him.
The cocaine is worth around Rs 11.57 crore in the international grey market, officials said. This is one of the largest seizures of cocaine in Hyderabad in the recent times by DRI. According to the DRI, the sleuths intercepted the passenger who disembarked an Air Emirates flight on April 21 based on data analysis and intelligence gathering.
Upon interrogations, the passenger confessed to having ingested the capsules containing cocaine. He purged 22 capsules at the airport and sought medical assistance. He was rushed to a hospital, where, under medical supervision, he purged out 57 more capsules over a period of five days, taking the total to 79 capsules.
The capsules, covered with transparent adhesive tape, were cut open and the cocaine recovered. During the investigation, it’s revealed that the passenger travelled to Johannesburg from Tanzania.From Johannesburg, he was taken to Pretoria where he swallowed the capsules prior to his journey to India.
He was supposed to purge them over three to four days and hand them over to an unidentified person. However, he landed in the DRI net upon his arrival in Hyderabad. The passenger was arrested and remanded to judicial custody. Further investigation is underway, the DRI said.
Officials checking if arrested woman part of int’l network
DRI officials investigating the case of a Malawian woman, who landed up in Hyderabad with Rs 22 crore of heroin, are seeing if she belonged to an international network of carriers. Though she was visiting Hyderabad for the first time, officials suspect she had travelled to other parts of the country for the delivery of illegal drugs. Officials found that she was travelling to India on a business visa to avoid law enforcement agencies. They suspect that she wasn’t delivering the heroin in the city, but that Hyderabad was a stopover before she could travel to cities in the northern or central parts of India