Mumbai: NCB arrests ex-army officer from Zambian with Heroin worth ₹26 crore

The Mumbai zonal unit of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) arrested a former army official of Zambia from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), Mumbai and seized more than 4kgs of heroin, worth approximately ₹26 crore, hidden in the cavities of his trolley bag

The Mumbai zonal unit of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) arrested a former army official of Zambia from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), Mumbai and seized more than 4kgs of heroin, worth approximately ₹26 crore, hidden in the cavities of his trolley bag.

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The accused, Kenith Mulowa, 42, is a retired army officer from Lusaka, Zambia. He travelled from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Dubai, from Dubai to Delhi, and then Delhi to Mumbai. He had arrived in India on a business Visa.

In order to evade getting caught while travelling with the bag with contraband, he deliberately left it at the Dubai airport and arrived in Mumbai via Delhi. He then lodged a missing bag’s complaint at CSMIA and went to a hotel in Juhu for stay.

As NCB officers had already received inputs about Mulowa’s suspicious involvement in drugs trafficking, they kept a close watch on his movements from airport to hotel and hotel to airport for two days.

On Friday when Mulowa arrived at the airport entry area to collect his bag, he was apprehended by NCB officers.

On examining the bag, the NCB team found three packets of heroin weighing around 4kg from hidden cavities. The seized drugs could be from Afghanistan, said NCB investigators.

“The accused is a Zambian ex-army officer and was injured in combat operation. He retired from the army on medical grounds. His wife and four kids live in Lusaka. This was the third time Mulowa had arrived in India and we are checking if he smuggled drugs on his previous visits,” said Sameer Wankhede, zonal director of NCB.

African drug traffickers, according to NCB, are no longer using ordinary citizens as mules and are roping in ex-army personnel for trafficking narcotics as they are trained professionals and are hard to crack during investigation, Wankhede said.

The senior Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officer added that amid the extensive crackdown by anti-narcotics agencies on African nationals trafficking cocaine, drug rackets have now switched to smuggling heroin, mostly cultivated in Afghanistan, and bringing it to India via the air route.

The usual route of smuggling heroin has mostly been from Afghanistan to Pakistan and then to India through the porous border or from Afghanistan to Pakistan then to Sri Lanka by sea route. It is smuggled in India mostly via Chennai,” Wankhede said.

According to NCB officers, due to Covid-related movement restrictions imposed across various nations, the demand of heroin, a highly addictive narcotic, has increased and thus its rate has also gone up. The drug now cost around ₹6 crore per kg in the illicit market, from ₹5 crore per kg.