In yet another major drug bust in Gujarat, the police seized 120kg of heroin from Zinjhuwadia village of Morbi district in an operation conducted late at night on Sunday. Three people were arrested in connection with the case.
The seized heroin is estimated to be worth Rs 600 crore in the international market.
Gujarat DGP Ashish Bhatia said that based on inputs, the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) and the local police raided the house of Shamsuddin Husseinmiya Saiyyed, alias Pirzada Bapu, and recovered the consignment.
The two others arrested are Mukhtar Hussein, alias Jabbar Jodiya, a resident of Jodiya in Jamnagar and Ghulamhussein Umar Bhagad, resident of Salaya in Devbhumi Dwarka.
In the last two months, there have been three major drug seizures in the state.
According to Bhatia, a preliminary investigation has revealed that the consignment was brought by Jabbar and Ghulam Bhagad via sea and the delivery was received from a Pakistani boat.
Bhatia said that the drug consignment was sent by Zahid Bashir Baloch, a resident of Pakistan. Baloch is absconding after an earlier seizure of 227kg of heroin carried out by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence in 2019.
Investigators have ascertained that Isa Rav, Jabbar’s brother, was in contact with Baloch and had coordinated to receive the consignment by sea.
The drugs are believed to have been delivered in the last week of October. The consignment was initially hidden in the coastal region near Salaya and was then moved to the location from where it was seized.
The police chief said that the conspiracy was plotted in Somali Canteen in the UAE. According to him, this consignment was to be handed over to the Indian smugglers to be transported to an African country.
However, those arrested had decided to divert and misappropriate the consignment intended for Africa to India and to sell the drugs in India.
Police claimed that Jabbar is a notorious smuggler and has close connections with various international cartels. He had been apprehended by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency last year when he had docked his boat in Karachi, Pakistan, citing “engine problems” and then had been let off by the Pakistani agencies.
Bhatia held that heroin cartels from Pakistan smuggle heroin into India through the Gujarat coast. In the past few years, there have been several attempts by these cartels to use Gujarat coast due to its proximity to Pakistan as a landing point for heroin.
He said that the most common modus operandi of the Pakistani and Iranian heroin smugglers is to deliver the heroin to Indian counterparts at the Indo-Pak International Maritime Boundary Line.
Bhatia said that the Gujarat Police has been successful in neutralising all such attempts, and all the consignments sent by these cartels have been successfully seized, and the accused persons arrested.
Interrogations and investigations have also revealed that various geopolitical reasons are responsible for this surge in the attempts made via the Gujarat coast.
