Central agencies yet to trace actual drug receiver

International drug peddlers prefer Hyderabad and a few other airports in south India

Though a huge quantity of cocaine and heroin, both highly addictive class A drugs, were seized at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in the last couple of days, the Central enforcement agencies are hitting a dead end since they are unable to make a breakthrough in tracing the actual receiver in India.

Officials claim that the mobile phones used by the receivers, who contact the drug couriers after the flight lands at RGIA, will be active only for a brief period. “The mobile phones of the receiver will be active only for a few minutes after the landing of the flight on which their courier is travelling. Only the receivers will have the photographs and contact numbers of the transporters. The transporters don’t have the mobile numbers of the receivers in case they want to contact them if in trouble,” a senior official at the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence told The Hindu.

As a result, even the enforcement agencies are clueless about the receivers or the smugglers' networks. “The passengers caught with contraband are just couriers, they don’t know any details of the cartels in India,” he said.

Meanwhile, Customs officials suspect that there will be clandestine surveillance on the transporters throughout their journey wherein another passenger travelling on the same aircraft will monitor their movements. “And the passenger, mostly Indian nationals, will act as the receivers once the courier clears all the security checks and exit the airport,” a Customs official said.

He said that the international drug peddlers are preferring to use Hyderabad and a few other airports in southern India as their transit destinations to avoid major metros likes, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, where monitoring is high. According to the officer, there has been a spike in the smuggling of cocaine, heroin and other drugs to India, especially through Hyderabad, with restrictions on air travel easing and passenger traffic increasing.

When asked if they were able to at least get information about the final destination of the consignment, the officer said that drugs were not meant to be supplied for local consumption in the city. “The RGIA is used as a transit, but the consignments' final destinations were for abusers in Delhi and elsewhere in north India,” the officer clarified.

He said a maximum number of passengers caught with drugs were foreign nationals. “They don’t have much information about the drug network,” the officer added.