Rs 120 cr heroin seized after gunfight at Pak border

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, February 18

The BSF and the Punjab Police, in a joint operation, seized 22 kg of pure-grade heroin, two foreign-made pistols, six magazines and 242 rounds of ammunition after a gunfight with Pakistani smugglers along the International Border in Gurdaspur’s Dera Baba Nanak in the wee hours today.

Dera baba nanak Area notorious for ‘carriers’

• Villages near the IB are notorious for housing ‘carriers’
• A ‘carrier’ is an individual who collects contraband from near the border and delivers it to another person not known to him
• This person has his face covered with a piece of cloth, thus making him unidentifiable to the ‘carrier’
• A ‘carrier’ is paid anything between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 3 lakh per delivery by his handlers
• The police find it hard to break this supply chain as all characters are detached from each other

BSF DIG Prabhakar Joshi pegged the value of the heroin at about Rs 120 crore. This is the largest consignment of dope confiscated in recent years from the area.

Joshi and Batala SSP Ashwini Gotyal were among the first to reach the spot. “We reached Khasawali village within 40 minutes of being informed. The smugglers tried to push in the consignment through a PVC pipe around 5.20 am. A thick blanket of fog had enveloped the area, reducing visibility to a few feet. There was an exchange of fire, but the Pakistani smugglers managed to escape taking advantage of the fog,” said Joshi.

Officials said as weapons were also making their way into India along with drugs, it was a case of narco-terrorism. They said 22 packets of heroin were seized.

SSP Gotyal and BSF officials said a combing operation was underway. “This will continue till late in the evening as the tract of agricultural land is quite large,” said an officer. The incident occurred near the 42nd border pillar of the BSF.

Security agencies have been trying to identify the recipients of the consignment. This assumes significance as this is the third such incident in the same area in the last few months.

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