Three drug peddlers arrested in Tripura, heroin seized

Tripura Police arrested three members of an inter-state drug peddlers' gang and seized around 900 grams of heroin from them, police said here Wednesday.

The value of the seized heroin in the international market is around Rs.10 crore.

A police official said: "Acting on a tip-off, police arrested three youths from two different places in Agartala city. Around 900 gram heroin in 10 packets was recovered from them."

He said the drug was sent to the state forensic laboratory for testing.

Arrested drug peddler Paltu Acherjee, 42 is from Tripura while the other two peddlers Firoz Ahmed Chowdhury, 47, and Sarainam Ingou, 51, are residents of Silchar in Assam and Bishnupur in Manipur respectively.

The official said: "The detainees have confessed that they procured the heroin from drug smugglers of Myanmar."

Manipur, Mizoram and some other northeast Indian states are being used as corridors to smuggle drugs and arms to other parts of the country and abroad.

Four northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) -- share a 1,643-km unfenced border with Myanmar.

The eight northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim - share a 5,437 km international boundary with China, Myanmar, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Most parts are unfenced with the terrain crammed and porous.