Kolkata: A 31-year-old Nigerian woman at the Kolkata airport was detained for allegedly trying to smuggle cocaine in her uterus on Monday night, ten days after five Chinese nationals were arrested from a railway station in the city with almost 200kg of a banned party drug.
Narcotics Control Bureau’s eastern zone regional director, Dilip Kumar Srivastava said, “David Blessing was carrying around 12 grams of cocaine from Mumbai”.
“This is one of the rarest of rare events where narcotics were being smuggled by hiding them inside the uterus. Neither I nor any of my senior colleagues have ever heard of such an incident,” added Srivastava
Blessing, who was also found to be carrying 20 blots of LSD in her bag, will be arrested after the narcotics from her uterus is recovered under the appropriate sections.
Bureau officials were tipped off by one of their sources that a person was carrying narcotics.
“The presence of narcotics inside the uterus was detected through the X-ray machines at the airport.
However, we doubt that additional quantities of narcotics are hidden in other parts of her body,” Srivastava said.
He further informed, “She has been taken to a hospital, where other tests such as ultrasonography would be conducted to trace those. She will undergo surgery to take out the concealed drugs.”
Srivastava said that the exact value of drugs can only be ascertained after all those hidden in her body are recovered after operations.
The bureau officials found no criminal record of the past.
“But now we will get everything verified including whether her passport is genuine,” said an officer.
Five Chinese nationals on June 29 were arrested by the Government Railway Police with 197kg of amphetamine, a banned party drug that was valued at Rs 40 crore.
On July 4, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of West Bengal police seized 1.9kg of the same drug from a closed factory in Murshidabad district of the state.
A series of such raids against narcotics rackets in the state are being conducted at regular intervals by agencies such as NCB and Kolkata Police since the end of October last year.
A number of people, including disc jockeys of reputed nightclubs, popular restaurant owners and engineering and management students have been arrested.
Officials have also held meetings with the authorities of different management institutes on how to curb the use of narcotics among students.
Srivastava added, “They have noticed a shift in the style of operations as compared to earlier decades. According to him, students from middle-class educated families and nightclub jockeys seem to be replacing traditional peddlers, turning the supply chain bigger and more sophisticated”.
Banned drugs are also sometimes procured through the Internet using crypto currency.
