Cops trace cocaine journey from Colombia to Dubai, Goa to Delhi

After sending at least a dozen consignments to check whether they were being intercepted, the kingpin decided to send the 562kg consignment of cocaine through one of the oldest cargo ships in Dubai

A day after Delhi Police seized 562 kilograms of cocaine from a godown in Mahipalpur, marking their biggest-ever bust of the narcotic substance, investigators associated with the probe said they were on the case since August, when a Dubai-based sender started sending multiple consignments of various products, including clothing and other apparel, to ports in Goa through different cargo ships to throw police off his scent.

Police, who arrested four men in connection with the case on Tuesday night, on Thursday detained another person, a UK resident identified as 45-year-old Jitender Pal Singh Gill alias Jassi, from Amritsar in Punjab. (Representative photo)

After sending at least a dozen consignments to check whether they were being intercepted, the kingpin decided to send the 562kg consignment of cocaine through one of the oldest cargo ships in Dubai. However, special cell officers said they kept technical surveillance on him and tracked the consignment to multiple places across India, following which they finally seized it from the Mahipalpur godown.

An investigator said 42-year-old Tushar Goyal, who received the package and was arrested following the bust, was also surveilled based on technical inputs of his chats with the Dubai-based sender. “From Goa, the consignment was taken in two to three trucks to Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad. It was there for days, before Goyal and his associates agreed to take them to Delhi’s Mahipalpur,” the officer said.

The three others arrested on Tuesday night were Goyal’s driver Aurangzeb Siddiqui (23), his bodyguard Himanshu Kumar (27) and a Mumbai-based peddler, identified as Bharat Jain. The four men were caught outside the godown with 15kg of the narcotic.

According to a search of the area following his arrest, police said they found appointment letters stating he was a member of the Congress and headed the party’s youth wing in 2003, and was also head of its Haryana unit’s RTI Cell in 2021-22.

The syndicate

Police said they have identified the Dubai-based kingpin as Virnder Basoya, who directed Jassi to visit India to ensure that the contraband was supplied to his clients. A part of the consignment was scheduled to be sent to Maharashtra next week, police said.

Jassi was living in London for the past 27 years, but he is of Indian origin and his father served in the Indian Navy, investigators found. During interrogation, Goyal said that Jassi offered him ₹3 crore for distributing the drugs, deputy commissioner of police (special cell) Amit Kaushik said.

According to details shared by the police, the consignment reached Goa on September 20 and was received by two unidentified persons. Meanwhile, the kingpin contacted multiple distributors of his syndicate to receive the drugs from them.

Police said Goyal assured the syndicate that he could store the consignment “safely”. Goyal leased a godown in a residential society in Ghaziabad and stored the consignment, before moving it to his publication house’s godown in Mahipalpur on September 28.

Following the arrests, police raided the godown and recovered the rest of the consignment from gunny bags on the third floor of the building.

Another senior investigator, requesting anonymity, told HT: “The drugs were probably sourced from Colombia in August and brought to Dubai. From Dubai, the drug dealer sent it to India last month. We were waiting for Goyal to make a move. As he came in contact with Jain and made a deal, we caught him red-handed.”

Police said Jain and Goyal were not acquainted, as Goyal dealt with Basoya and Jain with Jassi.

The accused were planning to smuggle the consignment to Maharashtra, Odisha and Gujarat, in parts.