Following a tip-off from a recently arrested peddler, a number of Delhi police teams laid traps in several areas of the Capital. Along with Delhi police special cell, for past one month, other state police, including those from Punjab, Haryana and Tamil Nadu, were also on the lookout for the four drug peddlers, identified as A Venugopal Reddy (29), Ragmeet Singh (25), Shurbir Singh (28) and Autar Singh (48). The later three are Afghani-Sikh residents of Delhi.
Shurbir Singh (resident of Tilak Nagar) and Ragmeet Singh (from Old Mahavir Nagar) were nabbed from Majnu ka Tila near Delhi University where they were supposed to get the delivery of the heroin consignment. Reddy, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, was arrested from Shankar Road, while Autar Singh (also a Tilak Nagar resident) was nabbed from Karnal Bypass Road.
‘All of them were part of a drug syndicate operating in Delhi and were engaged in receipt and onward distribution as well as transnational peddling of high quality Afghanistan-made heroin,’ Sanjeev Yadav, deputy police commissioner (special cell), said. ‘The modus operandi of this narcotic transaction was to take the delivery of the consignment in Delhi coming from Punjab and further distribute it to other states for the usage in New Year parties,’ sources in special cell said.
He added that the recovered drug was manufactured in Afghanistan and then reached India (Punjab) though Pakistan border.
During interrogation, it was learnt that apart from Indians, several Pakistani and Sri Lankan members are engaged in this drug racket. Two of them have been identified as Ali in Kuwait and Samiullah in Afghanistan who are alleged to be the mastermind and a hunt has been launched to nab them. Ali scouts for customers in India and other countries and Samiullah controls the production in Afghanistan.
Since January, these four drug peddlers have received around 125 kg of heroin that was distributed among bulk and retail buyers based in Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, soon after the consignment reached in the Capital, the sources added.