BANGALORE: Officials of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) from Chennai busted an international drug trafficking racket by seizing 11 kg of heroin in Bangalore on Thursday night.

Sources in the NCB, Chennai, told The Hindu over phone that they intercepted a truck carrying the narcotic substance on National Highway 4, off Madanayakanahalli, on the outskirts of Bangalore

The heroin was hidden under a load of stones on the truck that was coming to Bangalore from North India. The drug consignment, estimated at Rs. 15 crores in the international market, was meant for delivery in Sri Lanka, the sources said.

The NCB officials, with the assistance of the local police, took into custody four persons who were in the truck. The NCB staff brought the four, along with the seized substance, to the Peenya police station here and completed the legal procedures before taking them to Chennai, the sources said. The sources said they were investigating the local links in the international drug trafficking racket.

This is the third instance in recent years where NCB officials have seized from Bangalore and its suburbs huge quantities of narcotic substances meant for delivery to Sri Lanka.

The Bangalore angle in the international drug trafficking came to light when NCB officials arrested two Sri Lankan nationals, P. Balakrishnan and his brother P. Rajarathnam, and T. Solomon of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu on December 13, 1999, and confiscated from them narcotics worth crores of rupees.

In another raid in November 1999, the NCB staff arrested a man, again from Tuticorin, and two associates from Bangalore and seized from them heroin worth several crores of rupees.

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