The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has re-arrested a drug peddler who escaped from its custody in Jammu three days ago, officials said on Thursday.
The accused, Aqib Bashir, was arrested in Punjab's Jalandhar in a coordinated operation involving the NCB, Jammu and Kashmir Police and Punjab Police.
Bashir, a resident of Kakapora in Pulwama district, had earlier been arrested with 522 grams of heroin from a passenger bus in Samba district on September 3. He escaped from the NCB's custody in Narwal on the intervening night of September 6 and 7.
"The NCB, in close coordination with Jammu and Kashmir Police and Punjab Police, has successfully traced and re-arrested Bashir, a notorious drug trafficker who had fled from the NCB's custody in Jammu," an NCB spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said that after fleeing from Jammu, Bashir reached Jalandhar via Pathankot. "He initially hid in a forest area near the Narwal fruit mandi. To conceal his identity, he clean-shaved, changed his clothes and altered his appearance," he said.
According to the agency, 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. Bashir was arrested when he was preparing to move towards Delhi or another state," the spokesperson said.
The agency said Bashir's arrest was part of a month-long operation in the Jammu division that exposed two routes used by narcotic smugglers to send heroin into Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan through the Uri sector and indirectly via Punjab.
In four interceptions over the past month, along with a linked recovery in Punjab, the NCB has seized 6.920 kg of heroin and arrested six accused, with Bashir's re-arrest marking the latest development in the operation.
