Three held with drugs in Punjab

Chandigarh, Jun 11 (PTI) Three members of trans-border narcotics smuggling network have been arrested with eight kg of heroin which was dropped by a Pakistani drone in a village in Punjab, police said on Tuesday.

Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav said they were arrested by the police's counter intelligence (CI) wing in Amritsar.

The accused have been identified as Gursahib Singh, Sajan Singh and Satnam Singh, residents of Jhanjoti, Bhakna Kalan and Kot Khalsa villages in Amritsar district, he said.

Besides the heroin, police also recovered a .30 bore pistol and 26 live cartridges from them.

The CI-Amritsar wing received inputs that some drug smugglers have retrieved a "huge" consignment of heroin that was dropped by a drone near the India-Pakistan border, the DGP said.

The drop was made near Dharamkot Pattan village and the consignment was to be delivered to Satnam Singh near Kot Khalsa, he said.

Police teams also apprehended Gursahib and Sajan. They were riding on a motorcycle and carrying 7.5 kg of heroin and 16 live cartridges which were seized, he said.

Later, Satnam Singh, a drug supplier, was arrested from Kot Khalsa and 500 gram of heroin and one .30 bore pistol along with 10 live cartridges were seized from him, the DGP said.

He said according to preliminary investigations, the accused persons were directly in touch with a Pakistan-based drug smuggler and supplying heroin across the state after getting it from Pakistan.

Probe has also revealed that the Pakistan-based drug smuggler used drones to deliver drug consignments from across the border, Yadav said, adding that further investigation is going on to find out the backward and forward linkages of the network. PTI CHS ANB ANB