Sharp drop in seized drugs in 2023-24

Agency sources said most seizures this financial year pertained to smuggling bids by passengers using the air route, often employing unique concealment methods. This marked a sharp departure from the two preceding financial years, when most seizures derived from smuggling of high-value narcotics in containers, via the sea route

MUMBAI: Seizures of high-value narcotics like cocaine and heroin by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in Mumbai and other parts Maharashtra have dropped significantly this financial year compared to earlier years. Between April and December 2023, the agency seized around 23 kg and 24 kg of heroin and cocaine respectively, while in 2022-23, the amount of seized heroin and cocaine was around 257 kg and 82 kg respectively.

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Agency sources said most seizures this financial year pertained to smuggling bids by passengers using the air route, often employing unique concealment methods. This marked a sharp departure from the two preceding financial years, when most seizures derived from smuggling of high-value narcotics in containers, via the sea route.

Air passengers usually carry small quantities of narcotics – ranging from a few grams to a kilogram or two at the most, said a DRI official. “But they go to great lengths to conceal the drugs and detecting them is always a challenge,” he noted.

The official related the case of a Ugandan national who was intercepted at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport on December 19, 2023, on suspicion of carrying drugs to convey his point.

“The accused – who arrived from Entebbe in Uganda via Nairobi, Kenya – had concealed the cocaine in her hair wig and bra pads. As a drugs enforcement agency, we have detected numerous ways of smuggling like concealing drugs in sanitary pads, camouflaging liquid cocaine in whisky bottles, black cocaine, and cocaine in moisturizer bottles. But this case was much more challenging,” the official said.

The accused was promised payment of around ₹1 lakh for delivery of the contraband to a designated receiver in Mumbai, she told agency officials after being busted.

Most of the drug seizures by the DRI this financial year derived from such air passengers, while in 2022-23, when the agency’s Mumbai zonal unit made record seizures of cocaine and heroin, they mostly pertained to drug trafficking via the sea route.

“The chief characteristic of the sea route or the cargo-container route is that it facilitates the smuggling of narcotics in bulk, wherein they are concealed well within the declared trade cargo, which is used as a cover,” said a DRI official.

Among the many examples of sea-based seizures of cocaine and heroin in the previous financial year, on October 6, 2022, the agency’s Mumbai unit intercepted a shipping container at the busy Nhava Sheva port in Navi Mumbai.

The container appeared to be normal – one among several carrying imported goods that had arrived from abroad. Its declared cargo was a consignment of green apples and pears from South Africa. But closer scrutiny revealed that inside the boxes containing apples and pears were fifty bricks of high-quality cocaine, each weighing around 1 kg. The value of this 50.23 kg cocaine – the largest seizure of the drug in recent years – was worth a whopping ₹502 crore in the international market.

Weeks earlier, on September 30, DRI officials intercepted another imported consignment at the same Nhava Sheva port – of popular Valencia oranges known for their sweetness and flavour, which had arrived in a shipping container from South Africa. A thorough examination of consignment yielded 9 kg of high-purity cocaine and 198 kg of the synthetic narcotic methamphetamine, whose combined worth was ₹1,476 crore.

Plant-based narcotics like cocaine and heroin are mostly smuggled into Maharashtra from abroad, while synthetic drugs are largely manufactured locally.

Officials said the agency has intensified its intelligence-gathering mechanism to detect all possible routes of cocaine and heroin smuggling to ensure no consignment escapes its scanner, whether brought in via air, land or sea.