As Rs 700 crore drug haul, unearthed in March this year, had put the Punjab police official on its toes for all these months, the recent arrest of its mastermind Jagdish Bhola has opened many doors for the investigators as the preliminary investigations has given several operational leads.
An Arjuna-awardee wrestler Bhola, during questioning, revealed that the African nationals were used as couriers for taking consignments of synthetic drug contrabands from Chandigarh to New Delhi. The names of Robert, Joe and David have figured in the investigation. Bhola, kingpin of a massive synthetic drug racket, was arrested by the Punjab Police on November 11 from a dhaba near New Delhi.
“Bhola’s questioning has revealed several operational leads concerning the drug racket and several missing links in past seizures, besides throwing an interesting light on his own activities,” said a senior police officer. Refusing to share the “leads” as of now, the officer maintained that the operational leads were being developed further in the investigation to completely uncover the drug network and will be shared on completion of the investigation.
A decorated wrestler-turned-police officer-turned drug lord, Bhola, was also known as ‘Kingkong’ in the wrestling world, and had said to be shown interest in the film line. The investigation also revealed that during the time when he was absconding from the Punjab Police, Bhola stayed in Panjim for some time, and wanted to invest his drug money in the hotel business in Goa. He was reported to have shown interest in purchasing a hotel for Rs 16 crores on the Bagha beach in Goa.
The questioning also disclosed that Bhola had learnt trade of manufacturing synthetic drugs like Ice (M-amphetamine) from precursor chemicals like ephedrine, pseudoephedrine etc from the Chinese and Vietnamis nationals and had gradually mastered it. He had started doing this manufacture in his Mohali residence located at 984 in Phase-X. Since very high temperatures of over 200 degree Celsius are reached in the manufacturing of Ice, there was a blast in his house while polishing the manufacturing process.