AHMEDABAD: In a major crackdown on cross-border drug smuggling, the Indian Coast Guard in a joint operation with Gujarat ATS on Sunday apprehended a Pakistani fishing boat carrying around 77 kg of heroin. The Pakistani boat ‘Al Huseini’ with six crew members was caught after entering Indian waters with a narcotics cache worth approximately Rs 400 crore, Gujarat’s defence PRO said in a tweet. The boat has been brought to the Jakhau coast for further investigation.
According to Gujarat ATS, the heroin was supplied by Pakistani smugglers Haji Hassan and Haji Haasam, and was to be delivered to people associated with the underworld in Punjab. The boat had left the Karachi port and was trying to establish contact for the delivery of drugs using a VHF radio channel and the code words ‘Hari-1’ and ‘Hari-2’ when it was apprehended, said the ATS. The drugs were to be offloaded somewhere along the Gujarat coast, but the boat was interdicted 6 nautical miles inside the Indian maritime border, according to the defence press release.
The Indian Coast Guard ship “sighted the suspiciously moving boat, which on being challenged, tried to flee, but was outmanoeuvred,” said the press release, adding that the contraband consignment was contained in five bags. This was the second joint operation of the Coast Guard and Gujarat ATS within three months. Last month, the ATS had seized a heroin consignment worth about Rs 600 crore from an under-construction house in Gujarat’s Morbi district.
Deputy Inspector General (Operations), Gujarat ATS, Himanshu Shukla said, “Due to the changed situation in Afghanistan in recent months, efforts to smuggle drugs into the country through Gujarat have also increased, but all such attempts have been thwarted by the Gujarat Police and other central agencies, and in the future too, no such attempts will succeed.”
In September, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence had seized around 3,000 kg of heroin from two containers at the Mundra port in Kutch. The contraband was believed to be from Afghanistan. The case was handed over to the NIA, which arrested around a dozen persons.