DRI seizes over 25 kg heroin concealed in oil cans at Jawaharlal Nehru Port; arrests businessman

(Representative image)

Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized more than 25 kg of heroin from a container during a raid at Navi Mumbai’s Nhava Sheva Port (Jawaharlal Nehru Port) on October 5.

According to a report in The Times of India, the Mumbai Zonal Unit of DRI, which carried out the raid, also arrested a 62-year-old businessman named Jayesh Sanghvi for allegedly smuggling 25 kg of heroin in a groundnut oil consignment from Iran.

DRI had detained the container which was set to be carrying a consignment of groundnut oil on the basis of intelligence inputs received, said a government press release.

Investigation revealed that a consignment of narcotics was concealed in the container. DRI officials said they found a packet containing off-white powder weighing around 25.45 kg at the bottom of five cans of groundnut oil which were seized under the provisions of NDPS Act, 1985.

"It is for the first time that heroin has been seized by any Indian Agency, which was found to have been concealed in oil cans, in order to make it nearly impossible to detect it during the course of usual examination of import cargo," the release said.

Earlier in July this year DRI Mumbai had seized 294 Kgs Heroin at Nhava Sheva port from a consignment which too had originated in Afghanistan. Before that, in August 2020, DRI Mumbai had seized 191.6 Kgs Heroin at Nhava Sheva port from yet another consignment of Afghanistan origin.

All these Drugs consignments originating from Afghanistan are shipped though Iranian ports of Chabahar / Bandar Abbas. Besides these bigger seizures, around a dozen seizures of heroin and cocaine have been made by DRI Mumbai in last one year, of quantities of a few Kgs in each case, from courier parcels or from passengers coming from Africa and South America.