19-year-old opium smuggler held near Kherki Daula toll

A 19-year-old man was arrested in the early hours of Monday from the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway on charges of peddling drugs. The police said that they recovered 1.84 kilograms of opium from his possession

A 19-year-old man was arrested in the early hours of Monday from the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway on charges of drug peddling. The police said that they recovered 1.84 kilograms of opium from him.

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According to the police, the suspect, identified as Ram Singh, of Jodhpur in Rajasthan, used to smuggle opium to different parts of Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab from Madhya Pradesh. He was arrested near the Kherki Daula toll plaza, following a tip-off.

Singh used to purchase a kilogram of opium for ₹2 lakh from Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh and sell the same for ₹10 lakh in Rajasthan, Haryana and Jharkhand, among other states, the police said. He also used to sell it in small packs of five grams for ₹2,000 each.

Preet Pal Sangwan, the assistant commissioner of police (crime), said that the suspect was arrested when he was on his way to deliver the small packets in the city, at MG Road and Golf Course Road. “We are yet to identify the dealers who had paid for the drugs in advance,” he said.

The police said he used to sell two kilograms a month and worked with two close contacts in the region, who are yet to be identified. The accused used public transport to smuggle the narcotics to different districts of Haryana, including Gurugram.

The Sector 10 crime investigation team received a tip-off about the drug delivery, and that a man would arrive by public transport around 3am. Four members of the crime team led by inspector Arvind Kumar were deployed near the toll when they spotted the man carrying a shoulder bag.

Sangwan said that the teams kept a close watch on him and after tracking him for half an hour, took him into custody. “The team found four packets of opium hidden in his clothes and the bag. The accused is a smuggler and was peddling opium for the past five years,” he said.

“The bank accounts and various other means of monetary transactions of the accused are being examined and we are also in the process of finding out how much money they (Singh and his associates) made in a month,” Sangwan said.

A case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act was registered at Kherki Daula police station on Monday. The police said on July 2, the suspect’s sibling was also arrested by the Jodhpur Police for possession of two kilograms of opium.