Customs department officials on Wednesday informed that their sleuths have seized banned narcotics from somewhere near the Indo-Bangladesh border areas in North 24 Parganas.

The department officials, however, have not spelt out the exact date and time of the seizure.

Three persons have been arrested in this connection. They have been identified as Iadul Sheikh, Mosharaf Hossain and Hasan Ali — residents of North 24 Parganas district.

The consignment that has been seized from their possession is that of a huge quantity of brown-sugar, estimated price of which in the grey market will be around Rs 2.25 crore. The consignment seized, sources said, having acetic anhydride, are of the purest quality and hence high priced.

During interrogation, the three arrested accused confessed that they had plans to smuggle the consignment to neighbouring Bangladesh, the sources added.

The investigation sleuths believe that the three arrested are mere a cog in the wheel of a major cross-border narcotics smuggling racket. Investigation is on to identify the main brains behind the racket, the sources said.

Recently, amid recovery of a huge banned narcotics consignment in Bengal, the sleuths of the special task force (STF) of West Bengal Police got specific clues of the involvement of different northeast region-based insurgent groups in funding of such narcotics rackets. The basis of doubts of the cops is the high quality of the narcotics seized during the last few months.

“Such purest qualities of banned narcotics are typical with the rackets running from north-eastern India,” a state police official said.

(This article has been published via a syndicated feed)