Aizawl/Agartala: The security forces have seized huge quantities of heroin worth Rs 15.59 crore and arrested seven drug peddlers during the past 24 hours in Mizoram and Tripura, officials said Wednesday.
Mizoram Excise and Narcotics department officials seized 3,310 grams of heroin valued at Rs 13.34 crore from two places near Aizawl and arrested four persons Tuesday.
The four drug smugglers, aged 25 to 40 years old, are residents of Karimganj and Cachar districts of southern Assam.
In Tripura, police and the Assam Rifles in a joint operation apprehended three youths with 558 gram heroin Tuesday night at Kumarghat in Unakoti district.
The youths, who hailed from West Tripura and Sepehijala districts, were coming from southern Assam in a car along with the heroin, valued at Rs 2.25 crore.
Both the Mizoram and the Tripura police said that as per the preliminary information, the drugs were smuggled from Myanmar and through Mizoram, the heroin was being ferried to other parts of the country.
Tripura’s 856 km border with Bangladesh and Mizoram’s 510 km frontier with Myanmar becomes an easy corridor of drug smuggling in northeast India.
Besides various illicit drugs, foreign cigarettes, gold, arms and ammunition, exotic animals, and areca nuts are often smuggled from Myanmar into the northeastern states, especially Mizoram and Manipur.
IANS