i: The Delhi Police have apprehended a couple accused of running an international drug cartel which was linked to Afghanistan, near Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital on Tuesday. The police received information through an unknown source.
The couple was identified as Zaheer Ahmed alias Adil (48) and Gulnar (39), wife of Zaheer Ahmed, both residents of Dilshad Colony, Delhi. The accused Zaheer was a school dropout and he was an auto-driver, and his wife Gulnar was also a school dropout. She was basically a housewife but she used to help Zaheer in extracting cocaine from cocaine-embedded cotton clothes.
According to the police, the operation yielded a substantial haul, including 690 grams of high-quality cocaine, a kilogram of cloth laced with cocaine, implements for extracting cocaine and heroin, and a kilogram of chemicals used in processing cocaine.
The estimated value of these seized narcotics is a staggering Rs 7 crore in the international market. This operation was set in motion when the police team received confidential information about a drug delivery near LBS Hospital. The suspect, later identified as Zaheer Ahmed, was arrested in possession of a significant quantity of cocaine.
During the course of the interrogation, it was revealed that he and his wife, Gulnar, were processing cocaine from cotton cloth embedded with the drug at their residence.
Further investigation revealed a connection to a woman named Upasna, also known as Tabassum, who was previously married to an Afghan national. Her husband Subhan Aryanfar had been arrested by the NIA in connection with a large-scale heroin seizure case.
Despite his arrest, the drug trade persisted, with a shift in modus operandi. Now, drugs were being brought into India via couriers disguised as clothing parcels embedded with cocaine or heroin.