Telangana teacher held at Bengaluru airport, 14 kg heroin seized

According to officials, a search revealed that the bags he was carrying had two false bottoms. These two separations had packets concealed with black tape. Officials said the black tape was used to evade the scanners at the airport

Bengaluru:

The arrested teacher was supposed to head to Delhi from Bengaluru, as per the tickets he bought, and needed to hand over the drugs to a receiver. (HT Archives)

A 52-year-old teacher from Telangana was arrested after he landed at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru with 14 kg heroin worth more than ₹50 crore, officials said.

The Bengaluru unit of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) got a tip-off that a middle-aged man was smuggling in large quantities of heroin from Addis Ababa to Delhi via Bengaluru. The team members stationed themselves at KIA on August 19 night and waited for the Ethiopian Airlines flight to land. Soon after it touched down and the passengers disembarked, they tracked the man after a search.

According to officials, a search revealed that the bags he was carrying had two false bottoms. These two separations had packets concealed with black tape. Officials said the black tape was used to evade the scanners at the airport.

The probe revealed that the teacher worked in a private school but lost his job during Covid-19 pandemic. During interrogation, the teacher said he landed the job to be a drug mule after reading an online advertisement. According to him, the job posting read that the company is looking for people who are willing to travel. When he contacted the number, someone in Addis Ababa took the call. He proposed an offer for carrying drugs to India and the teacher agreed.

He has been booked under the Narcotic Drug and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.