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Indian police officer caught for
heroin trafficking
WSN Network
 Mumbai: In a
rather glaring example of the rot in the police system, the
Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested an Indian Police
Service (IPS) officer Shajji Mohan for possession of 12 kg of
heroin.
Mohan, now
remanded to police custody till January 30, is the Deputy Director
of Enforcement in
Kochi, a recent
posting. Earlier, he was Zonal Director with the Narcotics Control
Bureau (NCB) in Chandigarh. He is a 1995 batch IPS officer of the
Jammu and
Kashmir
cadre and winner of a gallantry medal during his posting there.
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His Time In Punjab
As zonal director of the Narcotic Control Bureau's (NCB)
Chandigarh office, Saji Mohan was in the hotbed of the drug
trade. The border districts of Punjab are the favoured crossing
points for drug traffickers carrying heroin from Afghanistan
through Pakistan.
In 2006, the NCB had seized 125kg of heroin on the 564
km-long
Pakistan
border in Punjab, while the Border Security Force (BSF)
confiscated 35kg of contraband that year. The huge amounts get
past the Indo-Pak border undetected via conduits (tunnels). The
contraband is then picked up by Indian smugglers and transported
by road to cities like Amritsar, Ferozepur, Nawanshahr, Ludhiana
and Chandigarh. It is then loaded onto trains bound for Mumbai,
hidden among ordinary consignments of dry fruits, machinery,
woollens, etc. Mumbai remains the favourite transit port for
drug cartels for historic reasons.
The few who are caught often reveal that they had been smuggling
contraband for years. |
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He was arrested
from a club in Oshiwara in Mumbai with 12 packets of heroin weighing
one kg each. This is the third arrest in Mumbai in connection with
heroin possession, leading to the possibility of a drug cartel.
Earlier on January 17, the ATS had arrested Rakesh Kumar and Vicky
Oberoi for the same offence.
The heroin is
said to be of very good quality; and could have fetched a steep
price, especially in the international market.
“From the purity
of the material we can say that it was a very good quality heroin.
In the Indian market it would be priced at Rs. 5 lakh per kg, but in
the international market, it could fetch Rs. one crore per kg,
taking its total worth to Rs. 12 crore abroad,” the ATS chief KP
Raghuvanshi said.
Mohan, as Zonal
Director of NCB in
Chandigarh, had
seized a huge consignment of drugs. He manipulated the quantity to
show a lesser amount had been seized and sent some of it to Mumbai.
Mohan possibly started a racket selling drugs in Mumbai.
There is no idea
how heroin was siphoned off and sold. The circle of involvement
could be much wider.
28 January 2009
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