Taliban leader, Punjab gangsters behind smuggling of drugs, arms via drones

In their charge sheet, police said drones are being used to smuggle drugs into Punjab by the “Turkey-controlled syndicate"

A Taliban leader of whom not much is known, Nazar Mohammed, former Punjab gangster Navpreet alias Nav (currently based in Turkey), and Lakhbir Singh Rode (chief of the separatist Khalistan Liberation Force), along with five others have been identified as the main players in a syndicate pushing drugs and weapons into India using drones according to a charge sheet filed earlier this month by Delhi Police in the case of a heroin seizure of 350 kg.

BSF personnel after shooting down a Pakistani drone entering India from along the International Border in Punjab on Feb 3. (PTI)

The police said the names came from the interrogation of the two Afghan nationals arrested in the case, and an “in-house analysis” of the narco-terrorism syndicate, which, they claimed, is helped by Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Police also questioned a man who was arrested in a 2021 case for helping Pakistani smugglers bring in drugs through the sea route .

The others identified as the key players in the syndicate are Punjabi gangster who fled to Pakistan, Harvinder Singh alias Rinda , Afghan national Ahmed Shah alias Nawab Shah, a Peshawar resident Haji Musa, Mohib Masood (who is suspected to be in Pakistan) and Haji Nepali , whose location is not known.

Police told the court that Sikh extremist Nav, originally a resident of Punjab’s Tarn Taran, is based in Turkey, and the other people of this syndicate work from areas near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

In their charge sheet, police said drones are being used to smuggle drugs into Punjab by the “Turkey-controlled syndicate headed by Sikh extremists along with Af-Pak based syndicate” and with the involvement of the Taliban and ISI.

Quoting the statement of an arrested man, named Manjeet Singh, proprietor of an import company involved in a drug seizure case of 2021 from the JNPT port in Navi Mumbai, police mentioned that “a secret meeting” was held by Harvinder Rinda ( he is believed to have died in a Pakistan hospital last November), Lakhbir Singh Rode and others in 2021 to spread “terror activities in India and to expand illegal trade of narcotics drugs to finance terror activities.”

Singh was questioned at the special cell headquarters in January this year.

After Rinda’s meeting in Pakistan the Indo-Pak western frontier has reported a high number of drones from Pakistan entering India’s territory to drop weapons and drugs.

The first case of smugglers using drones to smuggle drugs into India was detected sometime in 2019. At least 22 drones carrying drugs and weapons were shot down in 2022. In 2021, there was only 1 such case. This year, the Indo-Punjab border in Punjab has already reported nearly 24 such cases. Records show that not just drugs but even weapons such as AK series rifles and Chinese pistols are being dropped. Last month, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Maan in a meeting with union minister Amit Shah alerted him about the increasing number of such incidents. Most drop zones of weapons and drugs have been reported in the Amritsar and Ferozpur districts.

The problem is not restricted to Punjab alone.

Cases have started increasing at the border in Jammu too. On Wednesday (April 12), security forces in Jammu’s Rajouri district shot down a drone from Pakistan and recovered 131 rounds of Ak47, 5 magazine and two lakh rupees in cash.

Between March 22 and April 1 , there were two such incidents in Jammu.