NIA carrying out searches in house near Chennai

CHENNAI: The NIA sleuths from Kerala carried out searches at a house in Thaiyur near Kelambakkam near Chennai on Friday in continuation with the raids in Tiruchy special camp.

House of one Faizal, a suspected conduit of the Sri Lankan drug lords lodged in the camp, was searched. Information about him was gathered during earlier search operation, NIA sources said.

NIA had conducted search operations on July 20 at 22 premises, including the special camp in Tiruchy, where foreign nationals with criminal backgrounds have been lodged, along with eight premises in Chennai and interrogated as many as 14 Sri Lankans for their suspected links with offenders involved in smuggling drugs and heavy arms.

During the earlier search, NIA team seized over 60 mobile phones and over 50 SIM cards along with a laptop and other digital devices.

NIA had registered a fresh case based on information collected during the probe into the case of the seizure of 300 kg heroin, five AK 47 rifles and 1,000 live 9 mm ammunition from a Lankan boat off the coast of Vizhinjam harbour near Thiruvananthapuram in 2021, sources said.

Fourteen inmates, including Danuka Roshan, Gunasekaran, Pookutti Kannan, Vikramasingam, Katta Gamini, Suranga Pradeep, Roopan, Mohammed Riyaz, Kennedy and Uma Raman were allegedly in touch with Pakistani smugglers to ferry drugs to India and Lanka. The gang was operating with Haji Salim, a Pakistani drug and arms supplier. These traffickers have been operating in India and Lanka and working for the revival of LTTE, NIA had said.

The gang was not only operating India and Sri Lanka in illegal drugs and arms trade for the revival of LTTE, but had been functioning as a crime syndicate.

The gang members making calls to foreign countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives to execute the illegal activities. The gang, sitting inside the camp, not only managed to make sure their narcotics were sent to the destinations in India and Sri Lanka but also indulged in killing and kidnapping in other countries, sources said here.

The special camp, which houses over 140 foreign inmates, including over 100 persons from Sri Lanka, has been in the news recently after some of the inmates staged a hunger strike seeking release from the camp. Videos of the inmates celebrating the birthday of one of them by cutting a 18 kg cake inside the camp were leaked two months ago.