JNPT cocaine seizure biggest in Asia: NCB

MUMBAI: The cocaine seizure from Jawaharlal Nehru Port here on Saturday was the biggest in Asia and dispatchers of the drug could have been testing India as a transit route, the Narcotics Control Bureau said on Sunday.

“It is something unusual,” director general of Narcotics Control Bureau K C Verma said commenting on the seizure of 200 kg of cocaine, worth Rs 500 crore in international market, from JNPT on Saturday. According to him, the biggest cocaine seizure this year was of 136 kg in China.

The cocaine despatched through a container could be a test by its despatchers to check India as a transit route for future, Mr Verma told reporters here. However, he declined to say how many persons had been detained for interrogation. NCB sources said five persons had been detained and were being questioned.

Mr Verma said it was also too premature to comment if the Mumbai underworld was involved in the case. He said the NCB has been on the look out for the cocaine consignment following information received in this regard. On a specific information, merchant vessel M V Voyager was intercepted when it entered Indian waters on June 2.

There were 16 suspect containers all of which were segregated at JNPT and scanned through X-ray machines, leading to the seizure of cocaine in one of them, Mr Verma said. He said the cocain seized was in purest form and was hidden in eight kitbags in a container that was transporting wooden logs to India.

According to Mr Verma, the container had moved from Equador to ports in Japan, Shanghai, Hongkong before arriving at JNPT. He said that all the suspect containers were despatched for Mumbai, but the one from which the drug was seized was meant to be offloaded here and later proceed to another destination.

Sources said that the NCB was in touch with law enforcement agencies of the European country where the cocaine was heading to, and a team of NCB officials was likely to visit the country for investigation.

The NCB official said the probability that the cocaine consignment was meant for local consumption was less since local consumption of the contraband material was “miniscule”.