Drug smuggler who sent swimmers for consignment from Pak arrested

Jalandhar: Police have arrested drug trafficker Malkiat Singh ‘Kali’, who had sent three swimmers to fetch a consignment of 50kg heroin from Pakistan, DGP Gaurav Yadav said on Thursday.“Police also seized 9kg heroin — a portion of the 50kg consignment — from his possession,” the DGP said in Chandigarh, adding that 22.5kg heroin had already been recovered by the police, taking the total seizure to 31.5 kg.“The development comes in less than a month after the Jalandhar Rural police had arrested drug smuggler Joga Singh, who swam into the Pakistan territory to retrieve the heroin consignment and 8kg contraband was seized from him. Earlier, the state special operation cell, Amritsar, had nabbed drug smuggler identified as Shinder Singh with 10kg heroin and Rs 1.5 lakh drug money in his possession,” he added.“A woman drug smuggler, Amandeep Kaur ‘Deep Bhai’, linked with this module, was also arrested with 1kg heroin, while one Shinderpal ‘Pappu’ was caught with 500g heroin from Mehatpur,” the DGP said. By tracking forward and backwards linkages in this case, Jalandhar rural police had arrested Kali, a resident of Tendi Wala village in Ferozepur district, from Boparai canal bridge near Goraya, he said. Jalandhar Rural SSP Mukhwinder Singh Bhullar said Kali had revealed that he was in regular touch with a Pakistan-based Haider Ali, who helped him smuggle heroin consignments into India in lieu of hawala transactions. “Kali also revealed that he had sent Joga Singh along with two more persons to Pakistan using a riverine route to fetch the 50kg heroin consignment, which was equally distributed between his and Joga Singh’s party,” he said, while adding that further investigations were on and a hunt had been launched to catch the remaining drug smugglers involved in this module.A fresh case was registered on Thursday under Section 21C of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act at the Goraya police station.