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CISF gets own drug testing kits to nab traffickers at airport
Delhi's Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport has been witnessing an alarming rise in drug smuggling cases. But since the customs department does not deploy its staff at the domestic terminal, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has now procured their own drug testing kits to nab traffickers. Faizan Haider reports.
Delhi's Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport has been witnessing an alarming rise in drug smuggling cases. But since the customs department does not deploy its staff at the domestic terminal, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has now procured their own drug testing kits to nab traffickers.
The kit will help the force to detect whether a suspected item is a banned drug or not.
"One of the kits will be used at terminal 3 and the other at terminal 1D. Earlier, no such checks existed at the domestic terminal. So we decided to train our staff in profiling drug traffickers. With this, we have been able to catch several traffickers and seized a sizeable amount of drugs. The suspicious items recovered from such people are first tested. If the results are positive, we inform the Customs department or the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB)," said a CISF official.
Earlier, the CISF used to call these agencies to test the drugs. "With this new equipment, we can get the results then and there," the official added.
In 2010 and 2011, no smuggling cases were detected from the IGI Airport. Suddenly in 2012, the CISF managed to nab 18 passengers with 459kg of drugs. That, sources said, helped the CISF realise that domestic routes were being used to smuggle party drugs out of the country. As per records, of the 18 passengers caught in 2012, 14 were scheduled to board a domestic flight.
The CISF official said that drug traffickers these days are using the Guwahati route to smuggle banned substances into African countries, which is a major market for party drugs. Students and call centre employees are being used as carriers to take these drugs to Guwahati or Kolkata. From there, drugs are as taken to Myanmar and Malaysia and finally to African countries.
"Also if the weight of check-in baggage is way beyond the limit, the passengers fall in the suspects' category," the officer added.
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