In a sensational incident, a team of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Zonal Unit, Chandigarh came under heavy fire on late evening of March 20th, while conducting a raid around Kala Sanghia village in Punjab’s Kapurthala. However displaying extraordinary courage, despite 20-25 bullets fired on the NCB team, agency sleuths were successfully able to arrest Palwinder Pinda, one of the kingpins of the drug export racket for investigation of which this operation was being conducted.
After his arrest Pinda attempted to flee but was overpowered by the NCB team, meanwhile a courier company employee who was accompanying the NCB team in his vehicle for identification of one of the accused in the case, was injured in the firing by the assailants.
According to information available to Thesocial24 from sources, recently NCB had exposed an organised gang exporting narcotics from Punjab to other countries via courier consignments and NCB had seized a consignment booked for another country, in which 500 gms Opium was found concealed inside an electric fan.
After the recovery of this, the NCB team started its investigation and it was revealed that Palwinder Pinda of Sunranwala (Chak Dona) in Kapurthala was kingpin of this racket, while Iqbal Singh Sonu and Kulwinder Singh Kinda of same village along with others were running this drug export cartel. It also emerged in NCB’s probe that almost all the accused have history of being involved in other crimes too and were along with drug trafficking they are also suspected of being involved in human trafficking too. It has also come to fore that one of the accused was recently deported from abroad for being involved in criminal activities.
It was during the investigation of this case, that the NCB team headed by Inspector Kuldeep Tomar and comprising of Sub Inspectors and Constables had gone to Kala Sangha area day before yesterday to nab the accused but the raid turned into a high speed Bollywood style chase as associates of accused equipped with arms, swords started firing on the vehicles of NCB officers. The chase finally culminated at Kapurthala highway where the Central agency’s officials were successfully able to nab Pinda the main accused, while others managed to escape via fields.
Further investigation in this case is underway and it is being anticipated that more arrests will take place soon.