A father and son duo was among three to be arrested with 18 kg of charas by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).
The accused, identified as Dinesh Rajput, his son Vijay Rajput, both of Jalgaon in Maharashtra, were arrested by a team of the NCB’s Delhi Zonal Unit from outside the Ghaziabad Railway Station allegedly with 18 kg of very high quality charas, presumably of Nepal origin.
The NCB is learnt to have received a specific tip off that a father-son duo travelling by the Gomti Express train will be bringing high quality charas to be supplied at Ghaziabad. The train plies between Lucknow and Delhi but the duo got down at Ghaziabad Railway Station. The charas was packed in layers of polythene and wrapped in brown tape.
After de-boarding the train at the Ghaziabad Railway Station, the father-son duo met a local resident who had come to receive them at the railway station as per plan.
The Ghaziabad local, later identified as Chandan Singh, was supposed to facilitate the duo in making the delivery of the drug to willing parties. All three were intercepted outside the Ghaziabad Railway Station and arrested following the recovery of the contraband from their possession.
Preliminary investigation has suggested that Singh hails from Kanpur and the Rajputs also have good links and a network in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. While the Rajputs are presently based in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, Chandan Singh was operating out of Ghaziabad.
The Rajputs allegedly admitted having been active in the trade for quite some time and had made deliveries of charas to parties based in Mumbai and Delhi in the past. They used to procure the charas from a supplier in Kanpur and supply in Mumbai and Delhi.
Many train tickets for the journey between Jalgaon and Kanpur, evidencing their travel between the two places in the past, had been recovered from them.
“Packing the contraband in multiple layers helps traffickers to evade detection by scanning machines at the airports and railway stations,” said Rohit Sharma, Zonal Director of NCB, Delhi NCR Zone adding that a total of 36 bricks of charas, each weighing around 500 grams, were seized.