CHENNAI: Affluent Indian males aged 50 and above, who are facing a temporary monetary setback in their personal or professional lives, are being targeted by international drug syndicates to operate as mules to bring in cocaine into the country, revealed investigations by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which has also perturbed officials.
In what is being seen as a post-Covid phenomenon, the syndicates, which operate out of European countries with links to the USA, target these Indian men after carefully scanning their profiles on job portals and interacting with them for a month under the pretext of a ‘background check’. Later, they are asked to pose as ‘consultants’ for ‘big Indian businessmen cracking deals in African or southeast Asian countries’, for which a handsome amount of a few lakhs is promised.
At the end of an all-expenses-paid trip, the men are asked to carry a gift parcel or a suitcase — containing 1-3kg of cocaine concealed inside a secret compartment unknown to them — and hand it over to a person at the Indian airport.
This has stunned and worried government agencies as well-to-do Indians who neither have any links to smuggling or drug trade, nor consume drugs, unknowingly get ensnared in this scheme. Probes also reach a dead end as tickets and travel plans are booked by the syndicates from US or Europe, and international numbers are used for maintaining communications.
Across India, DRI has booked several such cases at airports in Chennai, Bengaluru, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and other locations, sources said. In Chennai alone, in the past 18 months, around 10 cases have been booked. In April, customs officials nabbed a Rajasthani gem trader, which led to the seizure of 15kg of cocaine.
Investigations revealed a commonality: these men have either lost a lot of money in business recently or are facing personal financial issues.
For instance, the 52-year-old gem trader from Jaipur had been jobless for a few years due to a health issue. In 2021, he was contacted by a foreigner using an American mobile number, who promised him money if he helped crack a business deal in an African country. Upon his return, he was handed baggage containing cocaine, which was to be handed over to another man in Delhi, sources said.
Official sources stated that once these men realise the gravity of the offence they have committed, they enter a downward spiral, resign themselves to fate and lose all hope. “Their families disown them, one man was even divorced by his wife. It affects them mentally,” an investigator said. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, is a tough law and mere possession of narcotics such as cocaine or heroin — knowingly or otherwise — is enough for trial courts to hand down a hefty sentence of 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
For agencies like DRI and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), such cases present a massive challenge. Usually, cocaine is smuggled in by citizens either from south American countries like Brazil and Venezuela or African countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, etc. Surveillance and intelligence can spot such passengers when they enter the country. However, employing well-to-do Indian men with absolutely no link to smuggling or drug trade as mules poses a massive surveillance challenge given the size of the population and the burgeoning numbers of Indians travelling abroad.