Cocaine worth Rs 40cr seized

In the largest drug seizure this year, anti-narcotics sleuths arrested a Nigerian from a five-star hotel here and recovered high-quality cocaine worth '40 crores smuggled from abroad. The Nigerian, identified as Amobi Chijioke Obianika, was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Friday with a suitcase containing 8 kg cocaine at a popular high-end lodging address in south Delhi. The seizure of such a large consignment of cocaine is rare. The drug that has been seized is used in rave parties. This is the largest-ever seizure of high-quality cocaine this year. The value of the cocaine is estimated to be around '40 crores in the drug market,” NCB deputy director general R.P. Singh told reporters here. According to Mr Singh, Obianika adopted a clever modus operandi of not carrying the drug consignment himself when he arrived from Nigeria on September 26. He booked it on a separate flight which was supposed to be delivered by an airline courier a day later at his luxury room in the hotel. The Nigerian has been arrested under the stringent provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act even as the agency is looking for the potential customers of this illegal consignment. “We were on high vigil after recent reports of illegal drugs being supplied to students came to light,” Mr Singh said. A young student Anmol Sarna had recently died in the national capital in a suspected case of drug overdose and reports said that LSD was supplied to a bunch of students by peddlers. NCB officials said that acting on vital inputs, the sleuths kept watch on Obianika for over 24-hours before they caught him red-handed. The Nigerian suspect did not receive the baggage immediately from the airline courier when he arrived at the hotel but kept him waiting in the hotel lobby, officials said. After about 40 minutes, he called the courier boy to his room and as he was taking the suitcase when undercover NCB sleuths deployed in the hotel nabbed him