Drug racket: NCB team verifies seizures

Express News Service : Chandigarh, Wed Jan 28 2009

“We cannot rule out the possibility of Saji Mohan’s team in the entire racket as of now,” said Deputy Director General (DDG), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Dr Ish Kumar while speaking at the NCB zonal office on Tuesday. Kumar and his team reached Chandigarh on Monday to verify the seizures made by the Chandigarh Zonal unit during Saji Mohan’s tenure.

“We have verified the seizures. The seals are intact and the inventory is perfect. The narcotics recovered from Mohan do not belong to this inventory. We are probing into the other aspects also,” added Kumar.

The officials further said that NCB has decided to set up an ‘Internal Vigilance Cell’ to keep an eye on its personnel. While briefing mediapersons, Ish Kumar said a need has arisen to have such a cell, particularly after the ‘shocking’ incident of Mohan’s arrest.

Two engineers, gazetted officers of the Public Works Department (PWD), were called as witnesses for the verification. “The seals were opened before two senior engineers of the PWD and other NCB officials,” said Sandeep Mittal, Zonal Director, NCB (Delhi).

Mittal, however, added that unless they get any specific inputs from the Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) about a particular case registered during Mohan’s time, they don’t intend to reinvestigate any of those cases.

“We never had any adverse official report or negative intelligence information against Saji Mohan during his tenure in the last two years. The probe is on and truth will come out in the days to come,” added Mittal. “He was doing reasonably well and was producing results. But his involvement in the narcotics racket is a shock to the organisation. Every organisation has its black sheep and there is a need to weed them out,” said another official.

Saji Mohan, former zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in Chandigarh was arrested on January 25 by the Maharashtra ATS for allegedly running a drug racket.

Mohan’s mobile phone was under surveillance?
Sources disclosed that officials with the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the NCB had put Saji Mohan’s mobile phone under surveillance since January 4 after the NCB had intercepted a communication between two drug-peddlers during which, Saji’s name figured. “Saji Mohan changed his mobile phone number on January 8, but kept his handset intact and used a different mobile connection with the same handset. The IMEI number of the mobile handset, which was being used by him again figured in the surveillance records,” a top-level source with the NCB told Newsline while adding: “The ATS, Mumbai, had already picked Rajesh Kumar, a Haryana police constable posted at Gurgaon and it was on the basis if his statement that we managed to nab him red-handed.”