QUETTA: A team of security personnel led by Assistant Commissioner of Dalbandin Ayesha Zehri seized a vehicle and claimed to have recovered drugs worth millions of rupees from it on Tuesday.

According to details provided by Ms Zehri at a press conference, her team was informed through a source that a transnational organised drug smuggling group armed with sophisticated weapons was carrying drugs in a caravan of cars.

She along with her driver and a team of Levies Force personnel went to the Kazyo area of Posti, situated on Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where they were expecting the convoy to pass through.

“We stationed ourselves on two opposite sides of a hilly, narrow and daunting route,” Ms Zehri told local reporters. “After a long wait, a caravan of cars reached the area late at night. During the tough continuous operation of nearly three hours that included a fierce exchange of fire from both sides, we successfully contained the caravan by puncturing the tyres of one of their [Iranian] Zamyad vehicles loaded with drugs.”

After getting down from the hills, the Levies team captured the vehicle, changed its tyres in order to bring it to the Levies station in Dalbandin, which is the headquarters of district Chagai.

Balochistan’s Chagai district shares a border with Afghanistan and Iran, and reportedly, it is the drug route that comes from Afghanistan and is supplied onwards to Iran via Chagai and other districts of Balochistan.

Ms Zehri said she was feeling elated after the successful operation. “We put our lives at risk while conducting the operation,” she said.

But she alleged that Deputy Commissioner Chagai had declined to take charge of the drugs, comprising various packets of powder, recovered from the intercepted vehicle.

“I have come to know from our in-charge of the station that Deputy Commissioner Chagai Fateh Khan Khajak has instructed him not to take charge of anything ‘madam’ brings in. So, we have been denied to take charge of the vehicle loaded with drugs.”

“I do not know what law is this, even though I have written my report,” she added, replying to a question. “I don’t know what the deputy commissioner is objecting to. I am only told they cannot take charge of drugs worth millions we recovered in the operation.”

While speaking to Dawn on the phone, Deputy Commissioner Fateh Khan Khajak denied that he gave any instruction of not taking charge of the intercepted vehicle with drugs.

In fact, according to him, as soon as he received the assistant commissioner’s report he ordered the tehsildar to take action.

He said that as a result, within an hour, an FIR was filed, a copy of which he shared with Dawn. “The First Information Report [FIR] was filed at 10am and the assistant commissioner addressed the press conference at 1pm,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2020