 | « Back to article | Print this article |
The Delhi police, which is probing the city's biggest-ever seizure of cocaine worth over Rs 7,000 crore, has issued look-out circulars against six people, including an Indian-origin UK national who fled the country before the latest recovery of 208 kg of the drug from west Delhi.
According to police sources, the UK national, Savinder Singh, came to India last moth to supervise the transportation and delivery of the 208-kg consignment suspected to have been brought from South American countries.
The sources said Singh spent around 25 days in three separate locations in Delhi before fleeing to the United Kingdom soon after the arrest of the first four members of the syndicate. These arrests were effected on October 2.
"As of now, we have issued LOCs against half-a-dozen people, some of them foreign nationals. One of them is the person who kept 208 kg of cocaine hidden in west Delhi's Ramesh Nagar and fled to the UK," a police officer, who is privy to the investigations, said.
The officer said a dozen people suspected to be involved in the syndicate are on the radar of the Delhi police.
Earlier, police had issued an LOC against the syndicate's kingpin, Virender Basoya alias Veeru, who is believed to be staying in Dubai.
Basoya was allegedly running the syndicate with the help of India-based Tushar Goyal and UK-based Jitender Gill alias Jassi and Savinder Singh, the police said.
Goyal and Gill have been arrested while Basoya and Singh are yet to be nabbed, the officer said.
In the second big drugs haul in a week, the Special Cell of the Delhi police seized 208 kg of cocaine worth Rs 2,080 crore from a rented shop in west Delhi on Thursday.
The drug was kept concealed in plastic packets of snacks with "Tasty Treat" and "Chatpata Mixture" written on those. About 20-25 such packets kept in cartons were seized from the small shop in west Delhi's Ramesh Nagar area.
The sources said the shop owner told police that Singh had contacted him via a property dealer and took the space on a monthly rent of Rs 5,000. The property dealer had also taken his commission.
The police questioned the shop owner and the property dealer on Thursday.
The police said Singh had kept the consignment in the shop with the help of someone known to him.
On October 2, the Special Cell seized more than 560 kg of cocaine and 40 kg of hydroponic marijuana estimated to be worth Rs 5,620 crore from a godown in south Delhi's Mahipalpur and arrested four people. Two others were subsequently apprehended from Amritsar and Chennai.
On Thursday, police arrested one Akhlak from Uttar Pradesh's Hapur. He was the seventh person to be arrested in the case.
The police sources said most of the syndicate members do not know each other and were operating on the basis of code names on social media. They would often use the Threema app for communications related to drug deals.
The police believe that the accused were using Delhi as a transit point from where the consignments were supposed to be transported to other parts of the country.
The police teams are conducting raids at several places in Delhi and nearby areas, and trying to nab the other members of the racket.