Record Rs 25 cr drugs haul in Mizoram, 2 Assam men held

Aizawl, Aug 27 (IANS) In the biggest ever drug haul in Mizoram, police have seized 5 lakh very addictive stimulant drug ‘methamphetamine tablets valued at Rs 25 crore in the international market and arrested two persons belonging to neighbouring Assam, police said on Friday.

A senior Mizoram police official said that the police in a joint operation along with its sister agency had recovered and seized five lakh Methamphetamine tablets on Thursday night from a truck near Buichali Bridge, Sairang under Aizawl district.

The seized contraband items are worth Rs 25 crore in the international market, the police official said, adding that the driver of the truck Mantu Kumar Deb, 45, and his associate Subhas Das, 33, were arrested.

Both the detainees are residents of Karimganj in southern Assam.

The Mizoram police have registered a case under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

The police suspect that the drugs were smuggled from neighbouring Myanmar.

Methamphetamine, also commonly known as 'Yaba' or 'Party tablets' or 'WY' (World is Yours), is a synthetic drug, and is misused as a high-dosage drug among the people specially the youth in Bangladesh and neighbouring countries, besides India.

Assam Rifles Director General Lt Gen Pradeep Chandran Nair while speaking at a virtual discussion, organised by industry body FICCI last week, said that his para-military force has seized smuggled goods worth over Rs 1,603 crore since last year after the goods were smuggled in from Myanmar through Mizoram and Manipur.

"The Assam Rifles troopers alone had seized smuggled goods valued at Rs 857 crore last year, while contraband worth Rs 746 crore has been seized so far this year," Lt Gen Nair said.

Officials said that the drugs specially the highly addictive methamphetamine contain a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine. Various other contraband and arms and ammunition were often smuggled from Myanmar which shares 1,643 km of unfenced border with four northeastern states -- Mizoram (510 km), Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km) and Nagaland (215 km).

While Assam Rifles guard the India-Myanmar border, the Border Security Force (BSF) has been guarding the 1,880-km India-Bangladesh borders with four northeastern states of Tripura (856 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Mizoram (318 km) and Assam (263 km) besides West Bengal (2216 km).