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Rs. 2.2-cr. heroin seized at Shamshabad airport

HYDERABAD: A Thai woman on her way to Malaysia was arrested by authorities on charges of attempting to smuggle heroin concealed in her cabin baggage at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in the early hours of Saturday. The contraband, weighing 2.2 kg, is stated to be worth Rs 2.2 crore in international market.

The Thai national, aged about 31 years, had checked in her baggage when authorities of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) moved in to detain her.

Her cabin baggage in which the heroin was concealed was passing through level two security screening when sleuths stepped in, based on specific intelligence inputs.

The woman, identified by sources as Korn Wipha Pinkeo, was taken into custody under the stringent provisions of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. She was later produced before a local court, where she was remanded to judicial custody till May 23.

Deputy Director of DRI Dr. P. Babu said that she had come to New Delhi from Bangkok on April 30 and to Hyderabad on Friday. She was taking a Malaysian Airlines flight (MH 199) when she was arrested.

Highly placed sources said Pinkeo could be a courier in the drug peddling racket. She was given the packets containing heroin in Delhi and was to hand them over to an unidentified person in Kuala Lumpur.

Why she chose the Hyderabad route to reach Kuala Lumpur is being verified. Perhaps, the drug cartel had believed that Hyderabd could be the safe route to smuggle out the contraband.

Airport authorities said that there were four levels of screening of baggage. In the first level, the baggage would be x-rayed to check for odd-sized material like guns or knives.

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