Chennai: Officials of Air Customs Postal Intelligence have seized 400 ecstasy pills, valued at Rs 12 lakh, smuggled from The Netherlands at the airport and arrested a 27-year-old person from Andhra Pradesh.
Commissioner of Customs Ranjan Chaudhary, in a release here said, based on intelligence, officials detained one postal parcel suspected to be narcotics substance, which arrived from Haarlem, Netherlands at Foreign Post Office.
On examination, the parcel was found to contain one tin toy box in which two plastic pouches were present.
On opening the pouches, green-yellow colour pills and pink colour pills were found ingeniously concealed inside.
The pills tested positive for MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy- methamphetamine), a narcotics substance.
A total of 400 pills suspected to be MDMA valued at Rs 12 lakhs were recovered and seized under the NDPS Act, 1985.
The green-yellow colour pills are commonly known as ‘Brazuca’ (CBF) containing more than 220 mg MDMA, whereas the pink colour pills known as ‘Givenchy’ has 250 mg of MDMA.
The samples have been sent to the laboratory for tests. The parcel was consigned to a person based in Bhimavaram in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, which is situated about 550 km from Chennai.
As a follow up action, a team of officers from Customs (Preventive) Kakinada (AP) conducted searches at his residence based on the address in the parcel and detained one person.
He was later was brought to Chennai by a special team of Chennai Air Customs by road. He confessed to his role in the smuggling and was arrested and produced before the judicial magistrate who remanded him to judicial custody.
The accused was an engineering dropout and he had booked the parcel online through Dark Web and had made the payment in ‘Bitcoin’, a form of Crypto Currency.
MDMA commonly known as Ecstasy, a party drug that alters mood and perception and was chemically similar to both stimulants and hallucinogens which produce feelings of increased energy and pleasure.
The seized pills were extremely potent as they contain a very high dosage of MDMA. Dosage above 120 mg was considered to be high and could prove fatal.
Earlier, Air Customs made two seizures of MDMA pills in March this year and 1.7 kg of Cannabis from USA was also seized during lockdown in April at Foreign Post Office.