Mumbai: India's gateway to drugs

Mumbai: India's financial capital, port city and the trade gateway on the West Coast - Mumbai has been the centre of trade for a long time.

The city's vulnerable West Coast is fast earning the dubious distinction of being India's drug gateway.

As Saturday's huge drug haul proves, Mumbai's ports have also become the entry and exit point for narcotics.

The Narcotics Control Bureau sleuths on Saturday seized 200 kg of cocaine worth Rs 90 crore from a foreign ship at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. The narcotics were seized from a container that arrived on a ship, sources said.

The container belonged to Maersk Sealand and the consignment came in on a ship registered in Latin America.

So how do drug cartels use containers to bring in contraband?

First, the drugs are stashed into the corner of large containers and the rest of the container is filled with normal trade-able commodities like textiles.

The container then passes through cursory security checks and is loaded onto trains and trucks, which are to be taken inland.

On their way to inland container depots the containers are put in transit. It is then that the cartel strikes.

The cartel breaks the seals of the containers and replaces the cargo - such as textile - with the contraband. Then, an exact counterfeit seal is put on.

The container is then taken to the Inland Container Depot. Here, the custom inspectors do not find any trace of the contraband and all they see is the cargo.

The customs department says it's a practice they are now aware of. "Yes, the real danger is when it is transported by truck because anyone can break the seals and replace it with something else," says former Customs Commissioner of Mumbai, K P Mishra.

But the biggest loophole that stares the Customs Department in the face, right here at India's premiere sea gateway, is the Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT).

Only one in ten containers arriving here are scanned by X-Ray; the rest just go through without any checks.

"There are close to 5,000 cointainers that come in. Since we have only two scanners, only 300 or 400 of the containers get checked," says Mishra.

On an average, over 4,000 containers leave JNPT on inland journeys everyday. With the possibility of dubious cargo and then one has little mysteries like this one.

CNN-IBN Special Investigation Team came across an abandoned container which had floated ashore on Zai beach in Maharashtra last year.

With all it's locks broken, this could indeed be one of those mysterys that drug cartels could have an answer to.

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