Jammu, Sep 10 — Officials of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) said on Thursday that the drug trafficking accused, who had escaped from custody in J&K’s Jammu city on September 7, has been re-arrested.
The officials said the NCB, in coordination with the Jammu and Kashmir Police and Punjab Police, has re-arrested the drug trafficking accused, who had fled from custody in Jammu.
The accused had fled from Jammu and travelled towards Jalandhar via the Pathankot route, the officials said. He allegedly took shelter in a forested area near Narwal Fruit Mandi before altering his appearance by shaving his beard and changing his clothes.
The official said that following a three-day search and tracking operation across Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, a joint team of NCB Jammu, NCB Amritsar, NCB Chandigarh and Punjab Police traced and apprehended him in Jalandhar.
The accused was identified as Aqib Bashir.
“The accused was preparing to move towards Delhi or another state when he was apprehended.
“The accused used his contacts in Jalandhar to seek shelter and evade the search teams. Intelligence inputs and field efforts helped the agencies track his location. Aqib Bashir was arrested when he was preparing to move towards Delhi or another state.
“His initial arrest was part of a month-long operation by the NCB in the Jammu division, which exposed two distinct routes used by narcotic smugglers to push heroin into the union territory from Pakistan through the Uri sector and indirectly via Punjab.
“The NCB had earlier arrested him with 522 grams of heroin from a passenger bus in Samba district on September 3,” the officials said.
Further investigation is underway to ascertain the circumstances of his escape and identify those who allegedly provided him shelter and facilitated his movement.
Intelligence agencies believe that the major portion of narcotics smuggled into the country from Pakistan is used to sustain terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir