Pamela Devid Kirtitta and Thelma Mkandwire were held with 4kg drugs. Their brown suitcase was opened and sleuths discovered the false cavity which had fooled Customs machines and officials in the first place.

A Lithe Zambian woman in a beige jacket came out of the Ethiopian Airlines flight at Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport on Friday. The flight was a couple of hours late.

Thelma Mkandwire, the 38-year-old mother of five children, walked confidently with her large brown suitcase and a handbag through Customs check. The passage was smooth, and she stepped out into the chilly Delhi afternoon, boarded an Innova private taxi, and zipped off for her destination - a seedy hotel in south Delhi's Mahipalpur, barely three km from the airport.

HOW THE ARREST UNRAVELLED

Thelma failed to notice 10 men and women who were waiting for her at the airport, hidden innocuously in the crowd of travellers. One of their trusted informers knew what hi-tech machines and airport officials could not detect. This person had tipped off the NCB.

The zonal team of detectives from NCB then got on to two cars and two bikes and started tailing her taxi. Once Thelma reached the hotel, she checked into a secondfloor room. Shortly, another African woman - a plumpish Tanzanian named Pamela Devid Kiritta, 41 - arrived. She was to receive the gift Thelma had flown in with.

Pamela had put up at a Vasant Kunj apartment for the last 20 days. This was her ninth visit to India, a country where she was out to make a small fortune.

The NCB team did not barge in immediately. They waited for two hours in the hotel, some of them slowly transforming into service staff.

Around 3.30 pm, they rang the bell of the room and an unsuspecting Thelma opened the door. One by one they went in, video cameras rolling.

Thelma and Pamela were detained. The brown suitcase was opened and a thorough search began. It was then that the team discovered the false cavity which had fooled the Customs machines and officials in the first place.

In it, wrapped with much care in thick, black polythene, was four kg of white powder. It was pure cocaine, enough to burn the wallets and blow the heads of several thousands of party-bopping Indians.

The value of the coke is Rs30 crore. Once spiked and adulterated with chalk dust or talcum powder, it would have got multiplied.

It would have gone in small packets to hundreds of drug peddlers across India, who would have then reached it to some of the most glamorous parties.

The police believe that Thelma had been caught once earlier in Pakistan but bribed her way out.

They suspect her operations span out to China and Hong Kong as well. Pamela is a busy trafficker too, Delhi being her rewarding workplace. She even has multiple entry tourist visa. Both of them are now staring at a minimum of 10 years time in an Indian jail.

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