The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Saturday, June 15, arrested a woman drug carrier and three others from Bengaluru International Airport premises for the possession of drugs concealed in sanitary pads.
The woman was accompanied by three agents when the NCB sleuths nabbed them from a car at the parking lot of Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) after receiving information on the drug cartels operations. She was supposed to fly to Doha in Qatar on Saturday when the officials arrested her.
The interrogation of the three agents revealed that the major players behind the illegal drug trade were two youths from Kerala. Mohammed and Abu were the kingpins behind the drug trafficking and were operating the India-Qatar circle for their narcotics trade.
The NCB sleuths were led to a rented house in Austin Town, where the duo was also nabbed by the officials. They also seized drugs worth crores from the house including methamphetamine, marijuana, hashish and hashish oil. All the six accused have been remanded in judicial custody on Monday.
The arrests were made after the NCB received credible information that the drug cartel was hiring carriers to smuggle the drugs from Bengaluru to Doha. "We began an investigation a few weeks ago and were finally able to zero in on four gang members on Saturday morning. The three men, who were agents, and the woman were caught in a Karnataka-registered car parked on KIA premises. She had 510 grams of methamphetamine and 572 Lyrica (a sedative) capsules in her possession," said an NCB officer, reports TOI.
According to the report, Abu himself was a mule for the drug trade three years ago and had returned from Qatar in 2017. Since then he has been operating from Bengaluru with Mohammed as his aide, after sourcing the drugs from Delhi, Mumbai and Goa.
The cartel has been active for a year and their main operations are from Bengaluru airport, Mangaluru airport and occasionally from Kochi airport.
