Chennai:Acting on a tip off, a NCB team raided a hotel room in Pallavaram, where the Brazil national, Dasilva Jaison (43), was staying after reaching Chennai on Friday and seized the contraband from him. NCB sources told DTNext that the seized cocaine was of the purest quality and has been sourced from production centres in South America.
The contraband was sandwiched concealed on the outer side of the covers of four notebooks and seven more packets in children’s books Jaison, who had acquired a passport only on June 16, 2016, had come to India on a tourist visa. His visa was valid from Aug 2016 to Feb 2017, but he was planning to fly back to Brazil on September 24.
“This seems to be his first consignment and he was waiting for the receiver to hand over the packets. He planned to leave the country once the packets were delivered,” NCB south zonal director, Prem Anand Sinha told this paper.
NCB officials suspect an African drug cartel operating in Delhi to be involved in this consignment.
“The consignment was meant for sale across India. Chennai will also account for a small share in this,” the official added. The African cartel, which has strong connections in the cocaine production belt in South America have been using Chennai as one of their major transit hub for smuggling the contraband.
In the current year, this is the first cocaine seizure in Chennai. In 2015, the NCB had five cases, which included a major haul of 2.35 kg of cocaine from a Colombia national.
This year, the NCB has managed to seize the whole of last year’s amount of nearly 3.7 kg in just one operation. The NCB has been getting information regarding such smuggling attempts from an international policing agency based in South America. This haul is also based on the input from the agency
