A Pakistani fishing boat carrying six crew members and 77 kg heroinvalued around Rs 400 crore was apprehended in the Indian waters off the Gujarat coast, sources said on Monday.
The seizure was made on Sunday night in a joint operation by the Indian Coast Guard and the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS).
Cases of heroin seizure in Gujarat are becoming frequent as seizures have been made in April, September and November. The cumulative value of heroin in such seizures is estimated to be worth Rs 21,750 crores.
Gujarat’s Defence Public Relations Officer tweeted that the Coast Guard in a joint operation with the state anti terror squad apprehended the Pakistani fishing boat ‘Al Huseini’ with six crew members on board in the Indian waters. They seized “77 kg of heroin worth approximately Rs 400 crore,” the tweet said.
The boat was brought to the Jakhau coast in Kutch district of Gujarat for further investigation.
In a similar operation in April this year, the Coast Guard and the ATS had apprehended a boat with eight Pakistani nationals and 30 kg of heroin worth about Rs 150 crore, from the Indian waters near the Jakhau coast in Kutch.
Only last month, the ATS had seized a heroin drug consignment worth about Rs 600 crore from a house under construction in Gujarat’s Morbi district. The ATS had said that the consignment was sent by Pakistani drug dealers to their Indian counterparts via the Arabian Sea.
In the single largest heroin haul in India in September, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized around 3,000 kg of the drug from two containers at the Mundra port in Kutch. Its value was estimated to be Rs 21,000 crore in the international market and it was believed to be from Afghanistan.
