5th arrest by NCB in Shaheen Bagh drug haul case, Dubai hawala link found

New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) The Narcotic Control Bureau has made fifth arrest in the Shaheen Bagh drug haul case where 50 kg pure heroin and narcotics valued at over Rs 100 crore were seized.

Earlier, four persons, including two Afghanistan nationals, were arrested by the NCB. The fifth accused Shamim Ahmad was arrested from from Laxmi Nagar.

"For last two years Shamim had been sending ill-gotten money of drug racket to Dubai through hawala. Every time he used to send Rs 40 to 50 lakh via hawala. Shamim worked as an Aadhti in vegetable market. He came in contact with another arrested accused Haider around two years back and joined the network," sources said.

A person called Shahid controlled the hawala racket of Dubai. Seeing that Shamim had good links with middlemen working in Dubai, Shahid included him in his gang.

On last Thursday, following a tip-off, an NCB team raided the specified locations and recovered 50 kg high quality heroin, 47 kg suspected narcotics, Rs 30 lakh in cash, cash counting machines and other incriminating material. The contraband was stored inside bag packs and jute sacks.

"The seized heroin originated in Afghanistan and the drug money is suspected to be channelled through hawala. The seized contraband was packed inside an online shopping store packets," the official had said.

"During investigation, it was revealed that an Indo-Afghan syndicate based in Delhi/NCR or the neighbouring states, seemed to be connected to the case. These syndicates had expertise in manufacturing heroin locally," NCB Deputy Director General (Operations), Sanjay Kumar Singh had said on Thursday.

According to him, these syndicates have been smuggling contraband into India through maritime as well as land border routes.

"Heroin was smuggled in with various legitimate goods and was later extracted from those goods by the Indian counterparts with the help of some Afghan nationals," the DDG had claimed.

Several raids have been conducted since Thursday and some are still going on to bust the entire network.

The syndicate was found to be connected to drug traffickers in the entire north India including Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi.