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Zambian man held with party drugs worth ₹ 24 cr hidden in cricket pads
The suspect, identified as Rodgers Silavwe, was nabbed by the Central Industrial Security Force as he arrived at the Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International airport on Saturday.
A 39-year-old man from east Africa’s Zambia was arrested on Saturday at the Delhi airport while boarding a flight to Mumbai with 24 kilos of Pseudoephedrine, which is used as a party drug. The man, who was hiding the drugs inside some cricket thigh pads, was scheduled to board a flight to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia from Mumbai, officers said.
The suspect, identified as Rodgers Silavwe, was nabbed by the Central Industrial Security Force, as he arrived at the Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International airport on Saturday.
Assistant inspector general and public relation officer of the CISF, Hemendra Singh, said that around 9 pm CISF’s surveillance and intelligence team, on the basis of passengers profiling, zeroed in on a foreign passenger for random checking at Terminal 3.
“During screening of his bags at the X-ray scanners, some suspicious items were spotted. On detailed checking, 46 cricket thigh pads were recovered, which appeared to be unusually heavy. After further inspection, the CISF team spotted that these pads were torn and that a polythene pouch was inserted between the pad and its cushion,” Singh said.
All the thigh pads were then checked thoroughly and it was found that all of them had similar cavities. A closer look revealed that these pouches were filled with a powdered substance, each weighing about 500 grams. “When checked, using drug detection kit, the powder tested positive for the drug Pseudoephedrine. When the total recovered powder was weighed, it was found to be around four kilos worth around ₹24 crore in the international market,” the AIG said, adding that Silavwe, along-with the recovered narcotic substance, was handed over to the narcotics control bureau.
