NCB ex-chief Saji Mohan had a free run for 2 years

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 20

Former chief of the Narcotics Control Bureau, Chandigarh, Saji Mohan, who was sentenced to 15-year jail by a Mumbai court on Monday for possessing drugs and attempts to sell them, had a free run for almost two years in this region. The Punjab and Haryana HC had in 2015 commented on the case saying it had blurred the line between a smuggler and a drug enforcement officer.

Once a favourite officer of the department as well as media due to his many seizures, Saji quietly began pilfering drugs from the seized quantity kept at ‘malkhanas’ in Chandigarh and Jammu  besides adulterating the stored drugs from May 2007 onwards.

He was exposed when some officers suspected the pilferage and reported his shady recoveries. As per a court document, Saji usually sold the pilfered drugs in Amritsar, Ferozepur and Jammu with the help of some members of his team. One of them was Haryana police constable Rajesh Kumar Kataria. He has been sentenced to 10-year jail in the case.

Documents available with the HC and the Mumbai court regarding Saji’s modus operandi revealed that he started pilfering the unclaimed drugs from May 2007. He added slaked lime to the contraband to increase its weight. Sometimes a part of the pure contraband was removed and slaked lime was added to it. While in a few instances, the mixing of drugs and slaked lime was done at the spot of the seizure, in other cases, it was done at the office of the NCB, Chandigarh. 

The investigation found the seizures where pilferage and adulteration took place were at Mohmediwala, Ferozepur and Jammu.  In some cases, the cash seized from the spot was distributed among the raiding staff as a reward. 

To avoid detection of adulteration in future,  the samples of the seized drugs were taken after they were mixed with slaked lime. In all, Saji pilfered about 60 kg of heroin. Of this, about 10 kg was handed over to a drug smuggler of the Jammu area, Naseeb Chand, for sale in Mumbai.

In 2015, the HC had criticised the NCB chief and his staff. While disposing of a review petition of some of the convicted staff members, it said, “The case exposes the murky underbelly of government agencies set up to stamp out the menace of narcotics, where the lines between the smuggler and the law enforcer are so blurred as to make it difficult to distinguish one from the other.”