'Narco dealers employ people from poor countries to be mules and send them to Delhi'

Despite the best efforts by the drug enforcement agencies, narco traffickers are able to bypass the lax security at the IGI Airport and sell their drugs in the Capital. The biggest trafficking module comprises African peddlers who have started to employ women trapped in poverty-stricken countries to become drug mules.

The issue came to the fore in a recent case, when the African drug peddlers employed two women, one from Tanzania and the other from Zambia. According to the Narcotics Control Bureau officials, the drug cartels had to change their modus operandi after various drug enforcement agencies had started targeting the airports.

The traffickers employ various methods to conceal the contrabands. Many of them are concealed in black polythene bags and concealed among common household items. The resourceful traffickers later started to create special cavities in their luggage to conceal their drugs.

The desperate traffickers shell out an astronomical amount to their drug mules to swallow the contraband and hold it in for a 12-hour flight. "We have seen some bizarre cases; like in one case, a South African man swallowed 65 packets of cocaine wrapped in cellophane paper. There was another case in which a Peruvian man had concealed 1.295 kilogram of cocaine inside the iron rod of the trolley bag," the officer added.

But when they started to get caught, African cartels started employing young women from poverty-stricken African countries. They are initially offered high paying jobs and they find out later that they have to transport drugs.

The Delhi airport does not have full body scanners and the sniffer dogs only have the ability to sniff out drugs for a total of 10-12 hours in a day. Taking advantage of the situation, many cartels started sending the women in droves.

"They come on student visa or on some medical grounds and overstay. The ones who have been coming for a few years are also in touch with local dealers and coordinate with them. However, they strictly maintain a tightly knit group," said Madho Singh, Zonal Director, NCB. Madho Singh has told this newspaper that the cartels used to deal in high quantities a few years ago. But after they were caught, they started to change their modus operandi.

"They will call their dealers to 4-5 places and keep changing the place. They never give out drugs even to their fellow countrymen unless they are sure that they can trust them. And now, they target women from these countries as they can easily slip away from the agencies' scanner," he said. But the NCB officials are now fed up with the proliferation of African drug cartels and believe that Donald Trump's deportation policy is the best to deal with them.

"We waste a lot of money on investigation, prosecution, housing them in jails. Their friends come and bail them out and wait outside courts. We should deport them the minute we get the inputs and let their respective countries deal with them," said an Intelligence officer from NCB.