HYDERABAD: Mules or couriers of cocaine opt for extreme methods to smuggle narcotics by crossing international borders or by air pumping drug pellets in their rectums or by swallowing tiny cocaine packets and carrying them in their stomachs. Case in point, in August 2015, when Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) spotted a 32-year-old South African woman walking uncomfortably at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Shamshabad, she said that it is because she was seven-months pregnant.
However, when the woman was taken to a hospital, officials found that she was pregnant with narcotic substance packets. Some mules opt for less moderate methods such as concealing the packets in socks, or create a cavity in luggages, cartons of electronic devices such as making space for the packets by designing fake base of the cartons.
NCB’S zonal director (AP, TS and Karnataka) Sunil Kumar Sinha said that cocaine is made from coca plant and it grows in particular climatic conditions available at Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. The coca leaves are put under process to convert it into cocaine powder, packed and then smuggled out.