Heroin worth Rs 100 million seized at Bangalore airport

In a major haul, the first of its kind at the newly opened Bangalore International Airport, officials arrested two foreign nationals and recovered from them heroin worth Rs 100 million in the international market.

Acting on an intelligence alert, sleuths of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) intercepted two foreign nationals, who were trying to smuggle the contraband out of the country, minutes before they could take Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumper early on Thursday.

The contraband carriers included a 23-year-old Thai woman identified as Khaektet Thitaree and a 36-year-old Mwinshehe Shabani Selemani, a Tanzanian.

Thitaree, a student, who had come to India on a short visit, had landed at Bangalore International Airport by a flight from Delhi earlier and was about to board the connecting flight to Kuala Lumper when the DRI sleuths caught her.

On interrogation, she admitted that she was carrying two packets of heroin in the false bottom of two suitcases she had already checked in. On examination, the sleuths recovered two packets containing 2.08 kg of heroin worth more than Rs 70 million in the international market.

DRI officials said Thitaree claimed that she had carried the baggage containing the banned substance in return for a remuneration of US $ 2,000 and a free flight ticket offered to her by certain unidentified persons in Delhi.

Meanwhile, Selemani, who had boarded the same Malaysian Airlines flight was de-planed by the DRI officials. He was using a novel modus operandi to smuggle the contraband. “He had swallowed 65 capsules of heroin, worth around around Rs 26 million”, a DRI official said.

Selemani was made to eject all the capsules under medical supervision. Each capsule contained approximately 13 grams of heroin. Selemani had swallowed the heroin capsules given to him by a group of people in Delhi to be delivered in Macau.
DRI officials said Thitaree and Selemani had arrived in Bangalore by the same flight from Delhi, but did not know each other. Both of them have been arrested and remanded in judicial custody.