8.30 kg ‘pure-grade’ heroin seized in Pathankot, 3 held

Ravi Dhaliwal

Pathankot, April 22

The Pathankot police claimed to have busted an inter-state drug smuggling gang with seizure of 8.30 kg “pure-grade” heroin and arrest of three smugglers. A fourth smuggler has been absconding, senior officers said, adding that he would be nabbed soon.

In police parlance, this heroin haul has been bracketed in the “A-1 grade” category. This is regarded as the purest form of the narcotic, the police said. Rs 5 lakh in cash was also recovered from the accused.

An FIR was registered under relevant sections of the NDPS Act at Sujanpur police station.

SSP Suhail Qasim Mir led a police team that busted the gang. Sources said the Pathankot police had information that a gang, specialised in smuggling drugs to Punjab from Jammu & Kashmir, would be smuggling the contraband from the Madhopur barrier.

Consequently, the SSP ordered that security should be tightened at the barrier. The cops got success when they intercepted a vehicle bearing a Punjab registration number and stopped it. Subsequently, the police frisked the two occupants — Gurjant Singh and Simarjit Singh — and found 15 grams of heroin from them. Both the accused belong to Tarn Taran police district.

The cops, after apprehending the duo, put them under sustained interrogation. Later, it was revealed by the accused that they had carved out a cavity near the car’s oil tank and had hidden several packets of the drug. “A total of 8.30 kg of heroin has been confiscated. We are probing the backward and forward linkages of the accused and hope to arrest more smugglers soon,” said SSP Mir.

The accused also disclosed that two more persons, Jaspreet Singh and Harpal Singh, also from Tarn Taran district, were involved in smuggling narcotics from J&K into Punjab. Later, Jaspreet was arrested, and a manhunt has been launched to arrest Harpal.

The police sources said it was one of the biggest seizure of narcotics by the Pathankot police in recent times.