The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), South Zone last week seized three consignments of concealed contraband from courier companies in Bangalore.

On May 25, two prime courier companies, on suspicion, opened a consignment and found 1.180 kg of hashish concealed in four photo frames. The consignment from Belgaum, was to be shipped to Finland. They alerted the Chennai-headquartered NCB, which rushed a team and seized the contraband.

Consequently, two more consignments followed, on Saturday and Sunday, again from Belgaum, to be shipped to Scotland this time. Both contained grass concealed in photo frames.

“The total quantity seized is around 3.5 kg. The street price of 1 kg of hashish in Indian grey market is between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 depending upon the purity of the drug,” an NCB officer told Deccan Herald.
Preliminary investigation reveals the contraband could be coming from Goa.

“Since Goa is close to Belgaum and is also a tourist centre, it may be that some foreigners visiting Goa could be involved in the racket. Quite a few of them come to India and buy drugs like heroin and hashish from here and ship them before they leave the country. In the recent past, there have been attempts of narcotics and psychotropic substances being sent through courier companies in other zones as well. In South, this is the first such instance,” he added.

Following the seizures, the NCB South has alerted other zonal bureaus in India. “We are also closely working with the CoD, Karnataka to track down the culprits,” said the officer.

Though an extremely uphill task to track down the sender and addressee since they all work under fictitious names, there’s a possibility of introducing bio-metric system to “register” the sender with the courier companies.
Under the intended system, any person sending packages by courier will have to record fingerprints in a fingerprint-capture machine and will be taken a picture, and the order will be recorded.