Kolkata: Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her displeasure over the functioning of the Murshidabad district administration for their failure to get leads about five Chinese drug smugglers who managed to set up a ‘drug factory’ over a large chunk of land with the help of a local panchayat leader.
During the administrative meeting at Cooch Behar on Tuesday, Banerjee expressed shock over the way the factory was running in the district unnoticed.
“I wonder why the local police could not find anything unusual about the Chinese nationals roaming in the area. We need to increase our surveillance. There are other senior officials too in the districts. No one noticed. We need to be pro-active,” the chief minister said.
On June 29, five Chinese nationals were arrested by the GRP from Kolkata railway station with 200 kilos of ‘Amphetamine’, popularly known as the ‘Dead Drug’, worth Rs 40 crores on them. The case was later taken over by the state CID.
The banned substance, Amphetamine, is a neural stimulant/euphoria-inducing drug.
Investigators believe that the consignment, neatly placed in 27 packets, was smuggled in from China and Myanmar and was meant for big cities in India and Bangladesh.
During the course of investigation it was found that the Chinese had set up a factory on 15 bigha plot in Murshidabad with the help of Bhoju Sheikh, a member of the Madhupur gram panchayat member in Murshidabad.
Villagers living near the factory, which was guarded by armed private security, were told that it was an ink manufacturing unit but CID sleuths recovered 1.9 kg of Amphetamine tablets from the premises during a raid on July 4.
Concerned over the developments, Banerjee insisted on the need for a thorough investigation into the case.
Meanwhile, officers of Delhi-based United States federal law enforcement agency – the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) – reached Kolkata on Monday and interrogated the arrested Chinese nationals at the state CID headquarter at Bhabani Bhavan in Kolkata's Alipore area on Tuesday.
Speaking to News18, DIG, CID, Nishat Pervez, said, “The US DEA officers came along with the NCB officials from Delhi to know details about the Chinese nationals.”
Asked whether the suspects had any US drug connection, Pervez said: “They came just to collect the information about them.”
However, CID sources confirmed that the US DEA officers interrogated the suspects after it was found that they were connected with a Guangdong-based drug peddling racket in China that has links with the US. This is the first time that Chinese nationals were arrested in Kolkata with such a large quantity of banned drugs.
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