Narco racket running under the cover of footwear trade busted

Central anti-narcotics department has unearthed a drug smuggling racket running allegedly under the cover of footwear business between the national capital and north eastern states as it seized drugs worth more than Rs 40 crore in a weeks' time.
A co-ordinated operation between the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and special units of Mizoram, Assam and other states' police departments in north-east has led to a total recovery of 1,528-kilogram tablets of a popular narcotic stimulant and party drug-- Pseudoephedrine.
The drug is smuggled across India's borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan.
The tip-off for the week-log operation came after the Mizoram police intercepted a truck on March 12 in Kolasib district of the state which had concealed 248kgs of the drug and agencies tracked the vehicle's origin from the national capital region.

"On receiving this information, the NCB Delhi unit swung into action and two trucks bearing Uttar Pradesh and Haryana number plates, reported to be carrying footwear, were found to be suspicious. On NCB inputs, one truck was intercepted at Guwahati on March 17 with 342 kgs of narcotics while the other was caught in Cachar district of the state with 662kgs of the same drug," sources in the anti-narcotics department said.
The NCB, after finding three such big instances of drugs smuggling on trucks from the NCR, raided transport godowns in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh and 275kgs of the illegal stimulant drugs was seized when they were ready to be loaded in trucks bound for North East, they said.

The NCB has conducted five more searches and it is expected that they will continue till tomorrow, the sources added.
"The operation is still on. The agency expects some more seizures and arrests," a senior official in the anti-narcotics unit of the Union Home Ministry said.