NAROWAL: The Narowal police arrested five suspects allegedly involved in cross-border heroin smuggling through drones.

A raiding team, headed by Shakargarh Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Rai Ehsan Elahi, was tasked with arresting the gang.

Mr Elahi told Dawn that on Feb 22, a police team intercepted a car at Kothe Mor in Neenankot and recovered a large cache of heroin from the five people traveling in the car.

Mr Elahi said the suspects had tied heroin packets to their bodies with sticky tape. He said the police also confiscated the control device of modern drones, eight batteries and automatic weapons.

The DSP said the arrested suspects are Muhammad Asif, Ghulam Tahir, and Muhammad Ashfaq, all residents of village Blaki in Shakargarh, and Mirza Azhar Beg and Hamza Iftikhar Butt from Lahore.

He said the suspects told the police that they smuggled heroin with the help of drones. They said the accuracy of location was determined through cellular networks and the WhatsApp site location system. He said the ringleader of drug smugglers was operating out of Dubai.

According to him, the suspects ran their operations out of several points along the international border between Pakistan and India.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2023