The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) (South Zone) on Thursday morning seized two kg of heroin worth Rs 1 crore from an AC-III tier compartment of Udayan Express, on its arrival at the city railway station.

They could not nab the man who was carrying the heroin.

 “He must have received information and fled before the train arrived in Bangalore,” said a government railway police (GRP) official. The NCB sleuths, along with some GRP officials, waited at platform number six  at the station where the Udayan Express from Mumbai was scheduled to arrive.

“The train arrived at 8 am. We boarded it to search for the contraband. We had received information that the man was travelling in an AC-III compartment. But we couldn’t get him as he must’ve got down before the train entered the city,” said the official.

The contraband was kept in an airbag in two plastic packets under a berth.

The carrier had boarded the train at Mumbai.

“The heroin had been smuggled from Madhya Pradesh and was on its way to Sri Lanka, India’s biggest grey market for the contraband. The  drug costs over Rs 1 crore in the island country. In all probability, it was meant for further transshipment from Sri Lanka,” NCB (South Zone) Director S Davidson said.

“The carrier was supposed to hand over the contraband to someone else here, who would have smuggled it to Sri Lanka. Bangalore is on the transit route of international drug trafficking to Lanka,” he stated.

Third big haul
This is the NCB’s third seizure of contraband in Bangalore since May this year. In May, they seized 10 kg of heroin from two persons  in Bommanahalli.

In June, the bureau seized three consignments of around 3.5 kg hashish tucked inside photo frames in courier consignments on their way to Europe.

Later, the State police tracked the consignment to a gang in Goa.