A Manipuri woman arrested with less than 1 kg of heroin in Mawrynkneng village

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaAugust 12, 2019

SHILLONG: A twenty-five-year-old woman and a juvenile from Manipur were arrested and a huge cache of heroin worth less than Rs 5 crore was seized from their possession during an anti-drug operation conducted on Sunday.

Acting on tip-off, the Anti-Narcotic Task Force (ANTF) of East Khasi Hills District led by SDPO (Sardar) Jagpal Singh immediately conducted a naka at Mawrynkneng village, about 35 kilometers from here, and intercepted a passenger bus, which was coming from Manipur to Shillong.

On checking, 80 soap boxes containing the contraband was recovered from three bags belonging to one Veineithem Haokip (25), a resident of Teigang village, Manipur, who was travelling along with a juvenile, District police chief Claudia A Lyngwa told reporters here on Monday.

While Veineithem have been booked under section 21 (c)/29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, the juvenile (since his involvement is yet to be ruled out) was however sent to a children home.

Terming it as the biggest recovery made by the state police in the history of Shillong and Meghalaya, Singh said, “The weigh of the contraband seized is 930 grams (less than a kg) and its street value is around Rs 4.5 crore.”

The SDPO also informed that the passenger bus bearing registration number MN 04P 1451 was also seized during the operation.

On noticing that the number of luggages does not tally with the information mentioned in the documents provided, he said the driver and conductor of the bus on being grilled revealed that there are three hidden compartments in the bus and from where foreign made cigarettes were also seized.

“We want to put a deterrence effect that they can devise as many things they want but we will still catch them,” Singh added.

Stating that the police have realized that there is a proper syndicate that is transporting a lot of smuggling items into Shillong including drugs, Lyngwa said if you have a passenger bus which has been cleverly design to accommodate hidden compartment, it mean that this has been going on for a long time.

‘There is a big time smuggling going on from certain states of the North East and coming into Meghalaya,” she said.

Whether the state police will seek the cooperation of the other states, the SP said, “We would also like to have an interaction with the other states to find out (a solution) and put a check to this.”

She further informed that in fact the Director General of Police had just attended a coordination conference in Imphal recently where this aspect was also taken up.

“…and I believe tentatively there will be another conference shortly in Shillong where a similar kind of coordination conference of all DGPs of various states and in fact we had already discussed that this will be one of the main agendas that will be discussed in that conference besides stolen vehicles because so far since I have come we have recovered 5-6 stolen vehicles from Manipur.”

Asked, Lyngwa said so far 2,300 grams of heroin worth around Rs 10 crore have been seized in the 21-22 catches done ever since she had taken over as the district police chief in the past few months. She has also observed that in most of the cases, women have been arrested.

On the allegations that police may be having nexus with the drug cartel, the SP categorically denied and said, “to have an allegation it is very easy anybody can say so many things but there is no evidence. There is not a single case that we have investigated or we have done a seizure…that police are involved. For us if a police is involved we have to make an arrest we cannot allow a police to run freely and happily indulging in selling of drugs, for us a seller is a seller.”