In yet another major drug seizure, a Pakistani fishing boat with six crew and carrying 77 kg of heroin worth around ₹400 crore was apprehended off the Gujarat coast in a joint operation by the Indian Coast Guard and Gujarat’s Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS).
The boat, seized late on December 19, has been brought to Jakhau fishing harbour in Kutch for further probe.
Gujarat's defence PRO in a tweet said the Coast Guard in a joint operation with the State ATS apprehended the Pakistani fishing boat ‘Al Huseini’ with six crew on board in the Indian waters.
They seized “77 kg of heroin worth approximately ₹400 crore,” the tweet said.
“The @IndiaCoastGuard in a joint Ops with ATS #Gujarat has apprehended one Pak Fishing Boat ‘Al Huseini’ with 06 crew in Indian waters carrying 77 kgs #heroin worth approx 400 crs. Boat brought to Jakhau for further investigation,” the tweet posted by the Defence PRO in Gujarat.
Last month, the ATS seized a heroin consignment worth about ₹600 crore from an under-construction house in Gujarat’s Morbi district.
It said the consignment was sent by Pakistani drug dealers to their Indian counterparts via the Arabian Sea.
In September this year, in the single largest heroin haul in India, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence seized around 3,000 kg of the drug, believed to be from Afghanistan and worth about ₹21,000 crore in the global market, from two containers at the Mundra port in Kutch.
The case has subsequently been handed over to the NIA for further investigation in which around a dozen persons, including a few Afghan nationals, were arrested by the federal agency.
Earlier in April this year, the Coast Guard and the ATS carried out a similar operation and apprehended a boat with eight Pakistani nationals and carrying 30 kg of heroin worth about ₹150 crore, from the Indian waters near the Jakhau coast.
