Man arrested for smuggling banned drugs

NEW DELHI: A 48-year-old man was arrested in south west Delhi for exporting banned drugs and foreign cigarettes disguised in boxes of clothes and spices to countries like the UAE, Australia, and the United States, an official said Wednesday.

The accused, Sanjay Kumar, was working in collaboration with his elder brother, Pramod Pandey, who is currently based in Dubai and wanted in other cases. Kumar allegedly smuggled the contraband using international courier services under the guise of cargo shipments, the police said.

“Sanjay and his associates used encrypted internet applications to communicate with Pramod Pandey. The group allegedly exported the banned substances disguised in boxes of clothes and spices to countries like the UAE, Australia, and the United States,” Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South West) Aishwarya Singh said.

Kumar was arrested on May 11 outside his warehouse. A subsequent search of the premises revealed large quantities of pharmaceutical drugs and foreign cigarettes stashed in cartons. The police seized 66,600 tablets of Alprazolam and 16,490 tablets of Zolpidem- both banned substances under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. “In addition, 26,000 packets of imported cigarettes lacking legal health warnings or MRP, as required under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), were recovered from a premises in West Mehram Nagar,” Singh stated. Kumar was arrested in 2011 by the Narcotics Control Bureau in Delhi and later by narcotics authorities in Mumbai.

He returned to Delhi earlier this year and resumed the illegal trade with help from his brother and an associate, Joginder, who remains absconding. A case has been registered under relevant sections of the NDPS Act and COTPA at the Delhi Cantt police station. The investigation is ongoing to trace other accomplices and uncover the wider supply network involved in the operation, a police officer confirmed

on Wednesday.