20 kg heroin worth Rs 100 cr seized in drug bust, two held in Punjab:

Busting a major drug syndicate allegedly being operated by notorious gangsters lodged in jails, the Punjab Police have seized 20 kg heroin worth Rs 100 crore in the international market with the arrest of two drug dealers. The drug dealers were arrested by the Kapurthala police on Tuesday morning.

The drug smugglers have been identified as Balwinder Singh of village Sarangwal Hoshiarpur and Peter Masih of Basti Danishmanda locality in Jalandhar. Both smugglers have pending criminal cases against them.

DGP Dinkar Gupta said that when police teams intercepted a truck and a Hyundai i20 car at high-tech Dhilwan police naka in Kapurthala on Tuesday morning, the search of the vehicle led to the recovery of 20kg heroin consignment from their possession.

The DGP added that the drivers of vehicles were signalled to stop at checkpoint by the police party but the occupants tried to flee. However, the alert cops managed to nab them on the spot after a brief chase.

Police recovered packets of heroin (one kg each) from their personal



possession and also from their vehicles, said the DGP.

SSP, Kapurthala, HS Khakh added that two special cavities had been created in the roof of driver’s cabin of the truck by the drug suppliers to cover the consignment.

The DGP added during preliminary interrogations, the drug dealers disclosed that a heroin consignment was smuggled from Purmara Mandi in Srinagar by Balwinder Singh in a truck and Peter Masih collected the consignment from him.

The DGP said that the police are suspecting a narco-gangster angle in this case and added that it is learnt Peter Masih was sent to collect the consignment by Gagandeep, brother of the notorious gangster Rajnish Kumar alias Preet Phagwara. Police suspects involvement of gangsters lodged in jails behind the racket.

“We would unearth all the links involved in this drug syndicate,” said the DGP.

Meanwhile, with this recovery, Punjab Police has managed to seize over 78 kg of heroin worth Rs 400 crore in the international market in the last 12 days.