Police have arrested 17 criminals involved in the drug smuggling scheme, including five police officers, a political activist, a contractor and a shop owner from various districts of the Kupwara and Baramulla regions of Jammu and Kashmir, local media reported on Friday.
"On a tip-off, one Mohammad Waseem Najar – a poultry shop owner and inhabitant of Darzipura, Kupwara – was caught with some quantity of narcotics from his private house," a police spokesman was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
After a preliminary investigation, Najar confessed to being a member of a large group of drug traffickers and revealed the identities of some of his accomplices. After that, subsequent raids were carried out in different places in the area and 16 more people were detained, according to the spokesperson.
According to police, one of those arrested, Shakir Ali Khan, a suspected Pakistani terrorist handler, turned out to be the main drug supplier to his son Tahmid Khan on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC). Two packages of substances similar to heroin, weighing about 2 kg, were found in Tahmid Khan's house during the investigation.
This year, 85 cases were initiated against 161 residents of the district. According to the spokesperson, 33 people involved in drug smuggling have been detained and imprisoned.