Largest heroin haul ever in South Asia detected

By Manjula Fernando

Malie Piyasena

G.B.Gnanaraj

Fifty-three-year-old Kashif met Mohammed Kamil in Kuwait some five years ago. They were expatriate workers looking for greener pastures in the oil rich State. A friendship developed between Kashif an engineer from Pakistan and Mohammed from Sri Lanka who then worked as a driver for a wealthy Kuwaiti family.

Mohammed's wife too was employed as a housemaid in the same house. After some years the friends parted ways. Both returned home to their countries but the friendship did not end there.

In one of their numerous communications, Kashif suggested that they start up a joint business with the money they earned in the desert land. 'Rohaan Impex - Sri Lanka' came to exist as a result, it was registered with the Registrar of Companies in Sri Lanka in 2011. On July 3, G.B. Gnanaraj a senior officer attached to the Custom's Revenue Task Force received a phone call from one of his trusted informants. He conveyed the information that a 40 foot container had arrived in the Colombo Port from Pakistan and it contained narcotics.

No indication of the size of the consignment was made by the caller, neither did he describe the type of narcotics in the container. Hence Gnanaraj little to believe that they were about to make the detection of a lifetime. However, in keeping with set guidelines of any narcotic detection they exercised maximum precaution to set the net to apprehend the importer as well as the exporter.

After hanging up, the senior customs officer did what was required of him. He shared the information with his immediate and trusted bosses. Together they weighed the credibility of the informant. Gnanaraj assured that the man was one of his most reliable informants, going by past information he had communicated.

Initial inquiries revealed that vessel, Northern Power which delivered the container had arrived in the Port on June 22. The container was loaded from the Karachi Port. The investigating officers knew they had to make their next move carefully. If the consignee smell anything fishy a claim would not be made on the container and arresting the culprits could be a distant dream. On the same day that the information was received by Gnanaraj, a case was filed at the Customs Central Case registry and necessary steps were taken to prevent the container from being released.

Neatly stacked cardboard boxes with tins of grease

The stickers bearing Pakistani Anti Narcotics Force clearance but the whole container load had packets of narcotics neatly concealed in the tins of grease

Sealed 'brown sugar' inside the tin

Then the investigating team sought the Attorney General's advice as to how they should proceed. The AG's advice was that they should not make any move to open the container or demand for an examination of contents until a customs declaration is submitted by the importer so that they had a hold on the consignee. This was important as on earlier occasions, they have faced difficulties to apprehend the suspects because they denied any connection once the contraband is exposed before any claim on the imported goods are made. On August 28, after nearly two months a clearing agent for the local consignee submitted a declaration to clear the cargo. It was the break the RTF officers were waiting for.

According to the declaration the container had 17,500 tins of synthetic grease and some items of ceramic sanitary-wear and plastic-wear. The reason given by the importer for the two-month delay to clear goods was that they were working on a permit . A permit was required to import natural grease but in this case the consignment carried synthetic grease hence there was no such requirement.

The Customs informed the consignee that they needed to do a routine examination of the container. The importer was asked to get down the Pakistani exporter to be present when the container was opened. Determined not to make them suspicious, they made sure the request was nothing out of the ordinary.

To conduct the examination, the container was transferred to the Orugodawatte container yard on August 29, accompanied by Customs officials.

Meanwhile, the Police Narcotics Bureau in a letter dated July 23, sought the Customs' permission to allow an inspection of the particular container in connection with a case they were working on. The Customs therefore informed the PNB sleuths to be present at the examination scheduled on August 30.

On Friday, August 30 the Clearing Agent flanked by the importer, his Pakistani friend and a local interpreter arrived at the Orugodawatte container yard.

Before the container was opened, upon asking by the officers, the exporter confirmed that the container was in its original form. Again he confirmed that there were no signs of tampering, before the customs began breaking some of the sealed grease tins.

As the officials start opening the grease tins one by one, they made a shocking discovery, concealed inside the tins, they found large polythene packs of heroin. There were not less than 1262 such tins carrying brown sugar, among the 17,500 tins labeled 'Synthetic Multipurpose Grease'. The shocking contraband weighing 261.292 kg had a street value of Rs. 2.6 billion.

It was reportedly South Asia's biggest heroin detection by the Customs.

The officials arrested the importer, exporter and the interpreter. The suspects have so far denied any knowledge of the massive contraband. The Customs officials say the men were dummies used by a kingpin in the business or they were using the age-old tactic to avoid life terms in prison.

The men would have turned up for the examination because Director RTF Malie Piyasena said they may have been confident of their concealing strategy and at no point of time would have suspected that the Customs had stumbled and detected the dangerous cargo. Some of the cardboard packages where the grease tins were packed had Pakistan customs clearance seal. "It could be a forged seal or the Pakistani Customs may have done a random check and missed the narcotics." This fact too could have boosted their confidence.

The Customs investigations indicate the local importer had registered Rohaan Impex - Sri Lanka two years ago and the address bearing Rohaan Impex is at Maligawatte, Railway Quarters. It was a house belonging to his father who is an ex-Railway employee. The man is residing in Maho. This had been the first commercial import done by his company.

They have also found that the Pakistani national owned the particular brand of synthetic grease but the packaging had been done in a factory hired by him. He has claimed that he was a thriving businessman having interests in Dubai, Kuwait, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Rohaan Impex is the name of his company. According to the Customs the heroin had been concealed inside the tins at the factory itself and not later.

The Police Narcotics Bureau is conducting further investigations into unsolved areas of the case including the speculation whether if Sri Lanka was a transit point for the lethal contraband.

The story is based on investigations conducted by the Revenue Task Force Unit of the Sri Lanka Customs under the direction of Director Malie Piyasena, Deputy Directors S.Edirimanna and Chandraratne. Investigations were handled by Superintendents of Customs G.B.Gnanaraj, J.A.S.Jayakody and Parakrama Basnayake.

The officers of the Customs Narcotic Control Unit were also involved in solving the case.