Indian police have arrested an elderly Indo-Canadian couple at Amritsar Airport in Punjab and seized from them 3.7 kilograms of heroin destined for Toronto. The couple were arrested as the Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto flight that was about to take-off last Sunday from Rajasansi Airport. The drug consignment was recovered from the couple’s luggage.
The heroin is worth millions of dollars in the international market.Raminder Singh Nagra, 60, and his wife Harjinder Kaur, 56, were accused of violating provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985.
They had been cleared by customs and immigration officials and had boarded the flight when the police officials entered the plane and took the duo into custody. Once removed, the flight carried on as scheduled.
Officials said investigations revealed that the couple, from a village near Nakodar in Jalandhar district, had made several trips between Canada and India in past years.
On being questioned, the couple told the DRI officials that their luggage was packed by their son in the village and they had no idea about the narcotics.
The arrest comes in the wake of a United Nations report which said that Punjab has become major transit point for drugs coming in from Afghanistan.
The World Drug Report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said the availability and consumption of drugs have increased in Punjab in the recent years with cities like Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Patiala emerging as hotspots, it said.
Hundreds of foreign nationals, including several Indo-Canadians, have been arrested in India on charges of possession and peddling in narcotics.
Among them are a Vancouver-based couple, Rajwinder Singh alias Raja and Paramjit Kaur were arrested with close to $1 million worth of heroin near Zirakpur, four miles from Chandigarh in Punjab last year.
Police alleged they had carved false cavities in the bags and spread a layer of carbon in an attempt to dodge sniffer dogs and airport X-ray machines.