Heroin worth Rs 150 million seized at Bangalore airport

A Vietnamese woman, who was carrying heroin worth Rs 150 million with her, was arrested minutes before was board a flight to Hanoi at the Bangalore international airport on Thursday.

The accused Nguyen Thi Trang, 24, who claimed to be student from Vietnam, had arrived at the airport from New Delhi a few hours ago. When Customs officials examined her baggage and two pairs of sandals before she was to board a flight to Hanoi via Bangkok, they recovered a large quantity of pure heroin packed in polythene bags.

“She had concealed a total of 4.28 kgs of heroin in specially made cavities in her sandals and false bottom of a suitcase”, Commissioner of Customs A K Koushal told reporters. While a search of the sandals yielded 900 grams of heroin, the rest was found hidden in the suitcase.

The Customs officials had received a tip off on the Vietnamese woman’s arrival in Bangalore airport. “After she flew in here from New Delhi, we took her into custody while she was getting ready to take the flight to Hanoi”, a Customs official said.

During interrogation, the suspect said she was a student and was in India on a short visit. She had apparently met a Nigerian national in New Delhi, who assigned her the job of transport the consignment to Hanoi. She also confessed to have received $ 1,500 and a free flight ticket for the job.

As the heroin appears to have a high-level of purity, the Customs department officials have sent its sample to laboratory for investigations.

Though the Vietnamese national was booked under Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985 and sent to custody, the Customs officials have begun an investigation to find out the existence of an international drug route that passes through Bangalore.
For, this is the second time in the last two months that foreigners had been arrested at the Bangalore international airport while trying to sneak out of the country with heroin. “Apart from finding out whether Bangalore has emerged as a transit point, we will also inquire into the origin of the drug and the players involved”, Koushal said.