CHENNAI: The coronavirus pandemic may have stopped international flights to Chennai airport but there seems to be no let-up in drugs being smuggled in from abroad.
Rajan Chaudhary, Chennai Air Customs Commissioner, told The New Indian Express on Thursday that a parcel containing narcotics from the Netherlands was seized by Chennai Air Customs at the foreign post office here.
"This is the fourth time we have foiled the smuggling of narcotics using the parcel service," said Chaudhary. "After international alerts, we have been scanning all the parcels and have been successful in foiling bids to smuggle the drugs," he said.
He said the parcel from The Netherlands contained 100 pills of MDMA, a synthetic drug popularly known as Ecstasy, worth Rs 3 lakh. These hexagonal pills commonly known as ‘Red Buli’ have a ‘bull’ stamp on one side and contain around 250 mg of MDMA, which is a very high dose. Recently, in February 2020, a man died and a woman got seriously ill after taking this pill in Warwickshire, England, said Chaudhary.
The parcel was destined for a residential locality in Ambattur. On reaching the locality, it was found that the address was incomplete and inquiries were made and it was found out that no person with the consignee's name was living there. Efforts are being made to apprehend the accused.
Earlier, Chennai Air Customs seized a parcel from the United Kingdom addressed to a person in Thiruvallur containing ecstasy pills. The parcel, from Wolverhampton near Birmingham, which was seized from the foreign post office in Chennai contained 270 pills suspected to be MDMA valued at Rs 8 lakh.
While rave parties during the lockdown may not be happening, addicts book parcels online through the dark web, the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets -- overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by search engines.
Earlier, in April, postal intelligence of Air Customs foiled a bid to smuggle cannabis from the US through a parcel containing sleeping bags at foreign post office. The parcel was despatched from Washington state to a person based in Annavaram in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
In June, a parcel containing green-yellow colour pills commonly known as ‘Brazuca’ (CBF) from Haarlem in The Netherlands sent to an engineering dropout based in Bhimavaram in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh about 550 km from Chennai was seized.