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Punjab Police bust ISI-backed smuggling module, 2 arrested
Police teams also seized two .30 bore pistols along with 10 cartridges from the possession of the duo
Punjab Police on Wednesday claimed to have busted a cross-border smuggling module backed by Pakistan’s spy agency ISI with the arrest of two of its operatives from Mohali.
Police teams also seized two .30 bore pistols along with 10 cartridges from the possession of the duo, additional IG, state special operation cell, Mohali, Ashwani Kapur said.
The arrested have been identified as Gurpreet Singh alias Gora alias Armaan Chauhan, a resident of village Kot Ise Khan in Moga and Rohit Singh, a resident of Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan. Both the arrested persons have criminal backgrounds with cases under NDPS registered against them in Punjab. The accused were also wanted by the NCB in a commercial quantity drug smuggling case registered in Rajasthan, he said.
In an official statement, Kapur said preliminary investigations suggest that the arrested persons were key members of a highly organised cross-border smuggling module that had direct links to Pakistan-based drug smugglers.
The module was actively involved in the smuggling of contraband across the Indo-Pakistan border, posing a significant threat to national security, he said.
Accused Gurpreet Singh, who is a model and singer by profession, played a crucial role in facilitating the movement of ‘hawala’ money— an illegal and clandestine method of transferring funds, which further enabled the financing of the cross-border smuggling activities.
The other accused, Rohit Singh, used to provide location coordinates to Pakistan entities along the Rajasthan and Punjab border via Gurpreet and thus facilitated the retrieval of heroin consignments dropped via drones.
The AIG said that further investigations are underway to identify and apprehend other individuals associated with this module.
