Mumbai: 345 Kg Heroin Soaked In Licorice Roots Worth Rs 1,725 Crore Seized From Nhava Sheva Port

At the port, 17 bags containing licorice roots soaked with heroin were found. Each kg of licorice roots carried 350 to 400 grams of heroin.

In one of the biggest seizures of heroin, the Delhi Police's Special Cell unit seized 345 kilogram of the contraband soaked in licorice roots from a container at Mumbai's Nhava Sheva Port, PTI reported. According to the Special Cell, the value of the heroin seized from the port is worth Rs 1,725 crore in the International market.

"The value of heroin seized was approximately Rs 1,725 crores. The container was transported to Delhi. This seizure indicates how narco terror is impacting our country and international players are using different methodologies to push drugs into our country," said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) HGS Dhaliwal.

The total weight of the licorice roots consignment was 20,000 kilogram.

The seizure comes after police arrested two Afghan nationals -- Mustafa Stanikzai, 23, and Rahimullah Rahimi, 44 -- on September 3 and recovered 312.5 kg methamphetamine and 10 kg "high purity" Afghan heroin from them.

After sustained interrogation, the accused told police about a consignment of licorice roots that was stored at Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai, PTI quoted a senior official as saying.

At the port, 17 bags containing licorice roots soaked with heroin were found. Each kg of licorice roots carried 350 to 400 grams of heroin, totalling 345 kg.

The Delhi Police team was sent to Mumbai last week to locate the consignment.

"It was learnt during the preliminary examination by the authorities, that the entire consignment had already been checked and in the process, the bags had got damaged and the licorice roots were found strewn inside the container," PTI quoted police as saying.

Police inspected each and every stick of the consignment and observed that the colour of some of the sticks of was darker than others. The team later detected heroin in all sticks that were darker in colour, police said.

Police said the consignment was first transported from Afghanistan to a neighbouring country, from where it was shipped to another middle-eastern country to avoid detection by law enforcement agencies.

From there, the consignment was shipped to JNPT. The consignment was supposed to reach makeshift factories in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, Haryana and other states for its further extraction and processing.