Patel was recently arrested in the capital while using her six-year-old daughter to transport a sizeable amount of brown sugar. [break]The Indian national from Motihari, Bihar had been involved for the last five years in drug trafficking, especially transporting the contraband across the Indo-Nepal border via Raxaul-Birgunj, and also carrying it up to the capital.
Though pretty well aware what she did was illegal and very harmful to others, she was not very apprehensive about falling into police hands. “I would do it whenever they (racketeers) asked me to. I did not care what they gave me to transport. I knew I was not doing something right though,” she told reporters.
The wiry woman said that she took to drug trafficking because of poverty and a spendthrift husband who would snatch away all her income to spend on liquor. Now that she is going to be indicted, she wants to send her daughter back to her husband, a rickshaw puller in Birgunj.
Patel had been renting a small place at Bishwas Tole in Birgunj some four years ago when she come in contact with racketeers.
A team from the Narcotic Drugs Control Law Enforcement Unit (NDCLEU) arrested the 30-year-old from Kalanki in Kathmandu, allegedly in possession of 614 grams of brown sugar, which is worth Rs 3 million. What astounded the narcs was the way she was transporting the contraband.
“A girl child walking in front of her was holding a Horlicks bottle with the contraband concealed beneath a layer of Horlicks powder,´ said SSP Nawaraj Silwal of NDCLEU.
“One would hardly imagine that a mother would use her own child as a cover for such work,” he added.
The arrest comes close on the heels of some major drug busts that give some idea of the pervasiveness of drug use and trafficking in the country.
A couple of weeks ago, NDCLEU arrested Devendra Rokka, a hashish racket kingpin who has since been grilled about his international operations.
Subsequent raids resulted in arrests and seizures that indicate trans-border channels in drug trafficking.
“We are trying hard to break the supply chain. But society cannot get rid of this problem until and unless the demand is suppressed,” Silwal said.
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