Delhi drug probe finds kingpin's links with political party

Delhi Police on Thursday arrested another person in connection with the city's biggest-ever drug haul with investigators finding that the main accused had alleged links with leaders of a national political party, officials said.

The arrested accused, Jitender Gill alias Jassi, a UK resident but Indian national, was nabbed from near Punjab's Amritsar airport on Thursday evening. He was intending to fly back to London, a senior police officer said.

Gill, aged around 40, had come to India to supervise the drug cartel's operations in the country but was planning to escape after the arrest of four members, the officer said. He said the accused had been living in the UK for the past 25 years but did not have a citizenship.

He is being brought to Delhi and will be produced before the court on Friday to seek custody for interrogation, the officer said.

On Wednesday, the police claimed to have seized over 560 kilograms of cocaine and 40 kilograms of hydroponic marijuana estimated to be worth around Rs 5,620 crore from a godown in south Delhi's Mahipalur.

A senior police officer said Tushar Goyal (40), who has arrested on Wednesday, is the mastermind of the syndicate operating in India, adding that investigators have also come across several photos of Goyal from a social media account where he posed himself with the leaders of the Congress party.

Goyal's purported Facebook account has his profile picture with a tiger and his bio mentions that he is the "chairman of Delhi Pradesh RTI Cell of DYPC, Indian Youth Congress".

The Indian Youth Congress, however, said in a statement that he was expelled from the organisation on October 17, 2022 for indulging in anti-party activities.

Apart from Goyal, the special cell on Wednesday arrested Himanshu Kumar (27) and Aurangzeb Siddiqui (23) of Delhi and Bharat Kumar Jain (48) of Mumbai, and confiscated the consignment weighing over 602 kilograms which were kept in sacks in the godown.

The officer said it also emerged during interrogation that all the four accused were planning to sell a large quantity of drugs in concerts, rave parties and upscale localities in Delhi and other metropolitan cities.

"We have formed several teams to nab the other members of the group," the officer said.

Police officials said around a dozen people from India and abroad were allegedly involved in the international syndicate of smuggling of banned drugs from middle-east countries to India.