The Delhi Police’s special cell on Thursday recovered 208kg of cocaine packed discreetly in packets of namkeen from a godown in Ramesh Nagar, west Delhi – the second major haul in the Capital in 10 days – according to officers aware of the matter.
On October 1, the police carried out the biggest drug bust in the city, with the seizure of 562kg of cocaine from Mahipalpur in south Delhi.
Though police said the 562kg narcotics were worth ₹5,000 crore, the street value of the drug in the United States ($120 per gram), according to UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), would value the haul at around ₹566 crore.
With the two raids, police have so far recovered a staggering 770kg of cocaine, and officers said that the two drug hauls were likely linked to the same cartel, allegedly headed by a Delhi-based businessman currently hiding in Dubai.
Police said that the latest raid was carried on the basis of inputs from one of the people arrested on Tuesday in connection to the October 1 seizure.
A senior police officer said that they found 200 packets of namkeen, labelled as “Chatpata Mixture”, in the Ramesh Nagar godown. The namkeen packets were opened, and all of them contained cocaine, he added.
Last week, a police team led by deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Amit Kaushik recovered 562kg of cocaine and arrested businessman Tushar Goyal, his two employees, and a receiver at a godown in Mahipalpur.
During the investigation, police said they found that the cartel was allegedly headed by businessman Virender Basoiya, who met Goyal in Tihar Jail in 2011. Basoiya, who is suspected to be hiding in Dubai, allegedly sent the consignment from South America to India via Dubai using an old cargo ship. The probe led the police to Basoiya’s London-based associate, Jitendra Pal Singh Gill. He was arrested from the Amritsar airport on October 3.
A senior officer in the special cell said, based on inputs from Gill and another accused, police found that another consignment had reached Delhi from Uttar Pradesh.
“It all started from Chennai. The accused brought the drugs from Chennai to Hapur and then transported them to Delhi. We caught the first consignment last week. During the probe, we arrested a transporter, A Safi, from Chennai. He was in charge of the consignment in southern states. On Tuesday, we arrested his associate, Mohd Akhlaq, from Hapur. He was in charge of bringing the consignment from Hapur to Delhi,” the officer said, asking not to be named.
Investigators said that Akhlaq was not aware that his vehicle had a GPS system installed in it, enabling police to track the vehicle to Ramesh Nagar.
The officer cited in the first instance said, “Gill also told us that he was going to receive this second consignment on October 13. Basoiya had hired another handler, a UK national, to take care of the second consignment. Gill and the handler were instructed to ‘distribute’ the consignment to different handlers and syndicates. We identified him but he left India on Sunday or Monday.”
Special commissioner of police (special cell) RP Upadhyay confirmed the latest raid and claimed that the seizure was worth around ₹2,000 crore. To be sure, the street value of the drug in the US is at least ₹210 crore, according to UNODC figures.