Gurdaspur: Trans-border heroin smuggler arrested

Ravi Dhaliwal

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Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, August 13

In a joint operation conducted by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and the Punjab Police, wanted drug smuggler Balwinder Singh Billa, having contacts with Pakistani operators, was arrested from an area falling in the jurisdiction of the Gurdaspur City police station today. The operation was conducted in complete secrecy and the local police were kept out of the loop.

Billa has been booked under the NDPS Act. He will be lodged in the Dibrugarh jail. Officials said it was for the first time that a person booked under the NDPS Act was being sent to that jail. Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh is also lodged there.

Normally, smugglers arrested under the NDPS Act are lodged in Punjab jails. Billa, at present, was out on bail.

For the past few years, particularly after Pakistani state and non-state actors started using drones for heroin smuggling, the cops had been trying to identify the contacts of Pakistan-based smugglers operating in India. Balwinder Billa is said to be one of them. “Yes, we have nabbed Billa. He is a big-time drug smuggler. For now, we cannot disclose more details,” said a senior officer.

Billa, a resident of Havelian village in Tarn Taran district, is said to be involved in heroin smuggling and fake currency rackets since 1990.

He was wanted by the central intelligence agencies, NCB and the state’s anti-drug special task force (STF).

In 2019, the Mohali police had arrested him. At that time, 750 gm heroin and 32 SIM cards were seized from him and his accomplice Amrik Singh Dedhna, who was also arrested with him. Billa used multiple SIM cards to make calls to his accomplices across the border.

Gurdaspur district is known for high incidence of drug smuggling across the border using drones. Once dropped in agricultural fields near the wired fencing, “carriers” pick up the contraband and hand it over to big smugglers. Billa was among those big smugglers, cops say.

Sources say Billa might have been in the city to meet his contacts involved in trans-border smuggling. The first case of counterfeit currency was registered against him in November 1992 at the Sarain Aamant Khan police station in Tarn Taran district.

Unconfirmed reports say Billa was not only involved in getting drugs from Pakistan, but he also supplied drugs in other countries.