RAWALPINDI, July 21: The Airport Security Force (ASF) arrested an air passenger at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport on Thursday for trying to smuggle out 30kg of heroin to the United States.

Abdul Jaleel Farooqi, the alleged carrier, was cleared by the desks of the Anti-Narcotics Force and Customs for boarding his Dubai-bound flight but his luck ran out at the last checking desk of ASF.

His two suitcases looked too heavy to the ASF personnel for the toys and clothes that Farooqi claimed they contained. When opened, the suitcases yielded 30kg of heroin, having a street price of $3 million in the United States.

It was one of the biggest hauls of narcotics at the airport in recent years. Dawn

Brig Shafat of ANF acknowledged to that carrier Farooqi, a Pakistani national, slipped through the ANF desk undetected but blamed it on the rush of passengers taking the Emirate Airline's flight EK-615 for Dubai in the wee hours of Thursday.

“It is not humanly possible to check the baggage of each and every passenger when more than two flights are leaving simultaneously,” he said.

Hawk-eyed ASF men however spotted Farooqi at the check-in counter and discovered him to be a carrier at their own counter.

Farooqi provided to interrogators the cell phone number of his handler who had left after dropping him at the airport.

When investigators reached the alleged handler and questioned him he merely said: “My job was only to drop the man (Farooqi) at the airport and that I did.”Farooqi was eventually handed over to ANF as it is the body that investigates drug trafficking and prosecute the carriers.