850 kg charas swept ashore recovered from Gujarat coast in two weeks

In the last couple of weeks, the Kutch West district police and security agencies have found 850 packets of charas worth nearly Rs 13 crore, said to be swept ashore along the coastline in Kutch district. Although finding packets of narcotics is not new in the region, the scale of such "recoveries" has made the state government worried. Sources said that government has ordered the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) to probe the case in detail.

Minister of State for Home Pradipsinh Jadeja on Wednesday said that "due to alertness of Gujarat police, 850 charas packets have successfully been recovered and role of Pakistan has been established, investigation is being carried out to find out the root of the smuggling rack." He added that special drive is being carried out to recover narcotics all along the shore. The state government is learnt to have asked the ATS officials to find out the reason behind recovery of such packets.

"The sea water has been a golden route for smugglers to sneak contraband to India, middle east counties from where the consignment are smuggled to European countries, United States, among other destinations. "In 2009-2010, we saw similar cases when such packets of charas or heroin were found abandoned on the coast line in Kutch. But, this time the numbers are huge," said a senior security officer in the know of the cases.

Out of 850 packets, Kutch West district police alone has recovered 450 while the rest of them have been found by Indian Coast Guard, Navy and Border Security Forces in the past couple of weeks. Each packet weighs one kg and wrapped in waterproof material.

When contacted, Kutch West District Superintendent of Police Saurabh Tolambia told DH, "We had received information about such packets lying on the shore. We have set up four special teams which are searching the entire shoreline right from Jakhau to Mandvi round the clock. So far we have recovered about 450 such packets and the search is on."

"We believe that a major consignment must have been thrown in the sea fearing security agencies. Over the last several months, there have been a number of security alerts of not only such consignments but also about terror alerts. This prompted the Coast Guard and Navy to intensify their surveillance in the water. We can't say for sure but it seems that fishing boats, which normally carry such consignments, dumped the consignment in the sea apprehending trouble," a source in the security agency said.

Last year, Gujarat ATS had arrested nine Iranian nationals and recovered 100 kg of heroin from their boat. Even in that case, the smugglers had tried to dump the contraband sensing their arrest. Similar incident was witnessed by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) last year when it caught a similar consignment in Indian waters off Jakhau coast. The officials had said that after seeing them, six Pakistani crew members of the fishing boat had tried to throw the packet into the sea. Both these cases had links with Pakistan and Afghanistan from where the consignments had originated.