NEW DELHI: A 120-day operation by Delhi Police’s special cell has blown the lid off an Af-Pak narcotics cartel controlled by a Taliban leader and his Pakistani counterpart, leading to the biggest ever contraband haul in Delhi till date with the police stumbling upon a consignment of 150kg of heroin worth over Rs 600 crore.The drugs were embedded in jute strings that would be made into bags, which were then filled with spices and dry fruits to be exported to India. These bags were prepared at clandestine locations near Khogyani and others places around Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan .A clandestine lab at Zakir Nagar in south Delhi, where the heroin was extracted from the jute threads, has also been busted. A Toyota Camry, Honda Civic, Corolla Altis and other vehicles have been seized.As per rough estimates, the cartel pushes heroin worth over Rs 5,000 crore into India. The module was cracked after cops tracked down a convoy of six cars plying on various routes around Delhi and Amritsar. While five of these cars carried the contraband, the sixth was driven by the kingpin who worked as the spotter for the cartel.Police initially arrested five smugglers, including two-Afghan origin chemical experts, and then detained a sixth suspect on Friday. The arrested men were identified as Shinwari Rehmat Gul and Akhtar Mohammad Shinwari from Jalalabad, Vakeel Ahmed from Batla House, Dheeraj from Faridabad and Raees Khan from Maharani Bagh in south Delhi.A special team led by ACPs Lalit Mohan Negi and Hriday Bhushan is on the lookout for the cartel’s main receiver, who is absconding. He has been identified as western UP-based businessman who was under the radar for being the sole receiver of jute bags being sent by dubious entities suspected to have terror links.The expose has revealed the sinister side of the spice and condiments trade between India and Afghanistan, and its use as a cover by international drug syndicates. The employment of chemical experts from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to oversee the reconstitution and processing of heroin in India indicates the scale and sophistication of the operation.“The operation was launched after the cell got a tip-off about a “convoy-type” movement of several big sedans, at regular intervals, in some areas of Delhi southeast district, which was uncharacteristic of the local demography and socio-economic profile. It was also learnt that these luxury car convoys often carried persons of foreign origin, especially from Afghanistan and African countries, apart from Indians,” DCP (special cell) Manishi Chandra told TOI.This raised an alarm and a deep deployment operation was launched at three places where teams led by inspectors Sunil Rajain, Ravinder Joshi and Vindo Badola were deployed to carry out careful surveillance.Soon, it emerged that this group of persons, including some foreign nationals, was in fact in the final stages of assembling some kind of an industrial set-up in a very densely populated and urban area of south east district. Further watch and surveillance revealed that the syndicate was using a fleet of luxury sedans that moved in convoys. The convoy would exit Delhi in the late night-early morning hours and would not stop before it reached Punjab and other neighbouring states.The efforts yielded results, when on July 17 police got to know that a large quantity of contraband was expected to be delivered at a location in Lajpat Nagar . Two men travelling in two cars were nabbed and 60kg heroin was found concealed in a specially created cavity between the backseat and boot space of each of car.The cops then raided the Zakir Nagar house and arrested two Afghan nationals with another 60kg of heroin. They led the cops to the fifth suspect from whom 30kg of heroin was recovered. The police also seized two semi-automatic pistols and 20 live cartridges from them.Read this story in Bengali