Smuggler in international drug racket caught

A 42-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly being one of the main suppliers of heroin smuggled into India from Myanmar, police said on Friday.

Ashiq Ilhai, who hails from Manipur’s Thoubal district, was nabbed by Special Cell in Imphal in Manipur on Thursday. He was wanted in a case registered under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. Police said he was involved in the supply of heroin for last 10 years.

“Ashiq’s gang used to get consignments of smuggled heroin at the India-Myanmar border in Manipur. They sent big consignments of heroin to Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district from where they were sent to other parts of the country, including Delhi,” said Rajiv Ranjan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell).

Ashiq was held after two drug traffickers Dharam Raj and Chander Shekhar were arrested with three kilos of heroin at east Delhi’s Trilokpuri in November 2014.
On interrogation, Dharam and Chander were part of an international narcotic syndicate run by Javed Khan.

Javed, who hails from Bareilly, was arrested in Uttrakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district. He told police that he along Pankaj and Ganpat used to procure heroin from Manipur-based Ashiq and his accomplices Anish and Jalaluddin. Later, Pankaj was arrested in Bareilly in December.

“An interrogation of the arrested accused made it clear that heroin was smuggled into Manipur from Myanmar by Ashiq, Anish and Jalaluddin and sold to Javed and Pankaj for further delivery to Delhi and the NCR,” Ranjan added.