Drugs Found In Stuffed Toy, 2 Women Among 3 Held In Separate Assam Ops

The Assam police today took into custody three persons, including two women, for their involvement in the narcotic drugs trade. The cops recovered considerable amounts of the contraband items, including some hidden inside a stuffed toy -- a sign that the smugglers are improvising.

At Dhemaji, a team led by the officer-in-charge of the Dimow police station, about 48 kilometres from the district headquarters, arrested Zakia Begum at her residence in the Dihajan area.

They seized 125.85 gram of heroin stuffed inside a soft toy in Ecuadorian drug cartel style.

"We had received inputs about her being part of a smuggling network and that they have changed their modus operandi to transporting products stuffed in soft toys. We recovered several vials from her, which indicates she probably receives them inside toys and sells them in vials," a police official said.

Heroin is a morphine-based analgesic drug, often deemed a more refined version of brown sugar. It is extracted from opium and is mostly smuggled from Myanmar into Assam via Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Mizoram.

In the next case, Guwahati police recovered party drug YaBa, a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine, from a 45-year-old Mizo lady, Khumi Khawung. She had travelled with it from Meghalaya's Shillong and was holed up in a private lodge in Bhangagarh area in the heart of Guwahati.

YaBa or other variants of methamphetamine come via all the Myanmar routes and from Bangladesh.

The two arrested women are being interrogated.

In a third instance, another Guwahati police team, along with the Manipur police personnel, arrested and brought back in transit a "very important linkman of a Manipur-based drug trafficking network".

The arrested person is Shabir Ahmed, 29, from Moirang area Manipur's Bishnupur district. He was allegedly trying to spread his gang's tentacles in Assam.