GUWAHATI, May 15 - The Court of the Special Judge here has held three persons guilty of smuggling contraband phensedyl, and awarded them 10 years of imprisonment, 21 months after they were caught by a BIEO team.
This is the first conviction achieved by the BIEO in a case related to violation of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
The convicted trio � Mohammed Rafi (42), H Fazzalu Ahmed (38) and AS Bakrudeen (39) � hail from Namakkal in Tamil Nadu.
BIEO SP Shyamal Prasad Saikia said a tip-off was received on August 7, 2016, that a truck carrying phensedyl from West Bengal to Tripura was moving on the NH-31. �The truck was intercepted at Betkuchi and brought to the BIEO campus. We found 50 plastic bags each of which carried three cartons with 100 bottles of phensedyl. A total of 15,000 bottles of phensedyl were recovered,� Saikia said. The total seizure was worth around Rs 20 lakh. The consignment was reportedly sourced from the South and was bound for Bangladesh.
Investigating Officer Prafulla Barman said tests conducted in the forensic laboratory here found that each exhibit contained 185.6 mg of codeine phosphate, which is very injurious to health.
The chargesheet was filed in two months and 16 days. The convicted trio was also fined Rs 1 lakh by the court.
