Author: Express news service
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 26, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ips-officer-held-in-mumbai-drug-bust/415248/
An Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, currently
posted as the deputy director of the Enforcement Directorate in Kochi, has
been arrested by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) for allegedly
running a drug racket. The officer, Saji Mohan, 41, was posted as the zonal
director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in Chandigarh for two years,
until December 31 last year.
ATS officials said Mohan, a 1995 batch IPS
officer from the Jammu and Kashmir cadre, was circulating part of a large
heroin consignment seized by the Chandigarh NCB, which he had set aside. The
racket was exposed after two of his agents, Vicky Oberoi (57) and Rajesh Kumar
(30), were arrested on January 17.
Oberoi, who has a prawn culture business,
is a resident of Oshiwara and used to make frequent trips to Gurgaon where
he posed as a film financier or producer. It was on one of these trips that
he came in contact with Mohan. Kumar is a police constable from Gurgaon who
was suspended for a brief period before being reinstated recently.
"On receiving information that a consignment
of drugs would be brought into Oshiwara, we laid a trap on January 17. In
the evening, we intercepted a Maruti SX4 which had two men in it. We recovered
a total of 1.85 kg of heroin from the two men. When interrogated, they told
us that the heroin was supplied to them by a senior officer. The ATS verified
these claims and launched an operation. On Saturday evening, an ATS team arrested
Saji Mohan from Classic Club in Oshiwara. We recovered 12 kg of heroin from
him," said acting ATS chief K P Raghuvanshi.
According to the ATS, a kilogram of heroin
is worth about Rs 1 lakh in the domestic market and Rs 1 crore in the international
market. The police also seized a laptop and some CDs from Mohan, who was booked
under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act for possession and
supply of drugs, and remanded to police custody till January 30.
"For a year and eleven months in 2007
and 2008, he was posted as the zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau
in Chandigarh. A large consignment of heroin weighing about 50 kgs was seized
under his supervision. We believe Mohan showed the recovery to be of a lesser
quantity and illegally set aside 30 to 35 kgs from this consignment. He was
running this racket by circulating the portion that he had set aside, and
further inve-stigations are on," said Raghuvanshi.
During his tenure in Chandigarh, Mohan had
launched "Operation Tricity" to make Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali
free of drugs. According to sources, the 50-kg consignment was seized by the
NCB in October 2007. Sources said Mohan, the son of an army officer, had played
an active role in the suspension of several police officers in Chandigarh,
and had even won a gallantry medal in 1999.
