I’ntl racket:Drugs sourced from UP, MP, smuggled into Canada

JALANDHAR: The four accused arrested in an international drug racket were sent to four-day police remand by a court here on Monday. The accused were involved in smuggling party drug ketamine and opium hidden in cooking bowls through courier to Canada.

Police get four-day remand to interrogate the four accused

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 18

The four accused arrested in an international drug racket were sent to four-day police remand by a court here on Monday. The accused were involved in smuggling party drug ketamine and opium hidden in cooking bowls through courier to Canada.

The counter-intelligence team led by AIG HKPS Khakh will now interrogate Canadian citizen Davinder Nirwal alias Dev, besides three others: Ajit Singh, alias Jeet, his brother Tarlochan Singh of Jaitewali village (Jalandhar) and cousin Gurbax Singh of Katthe village (Hoshiarpur). The police will try to track the money route since the mastermind, Kamaljit Chauhan, who has also been booked in the case, is based in Toronto. Chauhan had taken the first consignment along with him on his return to Canada from India last winter. The second was sent from near Jalandhar bus stand through a courier, whom the cops are yet to trace.

Jeet, who was trained in welding bowls together, was also involved in procuring drugs from other states. He had bought ketamine from Rampur in UP and opium from Madhya Pradesh.

The main accused, Dev, hails from Ganganagar in Rajasthan, but he had now been residing in Khanna, near Ludhiana. He had been frequently travelling to Maharashtra, Goa, Rajasthan, Dubai and Canada.

Earlier, he had smuggled around 5 quintals of ketamine in containers from Jaipur to Canada through Kandla port in Gujarat. He had also admitted before the Enforcement Directorate officials of having sent 925 kg of ketamine to China in 2005. Dev and his son Roy Bahadur Nirwal, a truck driver in Canada, have already been chargesheeted by the ED in the Bhola drug case. Another FIR was registered against Dev in Patiala in 2013, after he was caught with 10 kg of pseudoephedrine and 500 gm of intoxicating powder. The ED inquiry officer had found that neither Dev nor his son had any lawful source of funds from abroad.

Despite that, Dev purchased about 60 kanals of agricultural land in Ganganagar in 2006. He had also bought commercial property measuring 6,500 sq ft in Jaipur worth Rs 6 crore in the name of his son in 2007.