In May 2022, the Patiala police station Ghagga recovered 8 kg and 207 grams of heroin from the fields near Rajwahe Ki Patdi near village Dedhana. A month later, in June 2022, state police arrested drug smuggler Amrik Singh, a resident of Patiala.
An investigation into Amrik Singh helped establish his connection to the Inter-Services Intelligence, which is Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Police teams used a mobile phone to establish links with what would be revealed as Singh’s foreign connections.
It was then found that the ISI was targeting the Yol Army area near Palampur in Himachal Pradesh. Drug peddler Amrik Singh, from Harinder Nagar, was caught in a honey trap by the ISI. He was lured into making big money and then on the ISI’s instructions, began regularly leaking pictures and intelligence related to the available infrastructure along with the maps of Yol Army area to the agency.
The drug smuggler used a foreign SIM for this work. He was in touch with an ISI agent named Sher Khan on his mobile phone. Often, apart from sending voice recordings on this mobile, he also used to give information about the army. In return, he was provided with heroin and ammunition by the ISI.
According to police sources, Simgh made “a lot of money” by selling heroin and weapons on behalf of drug smugglers at high prices.
Station House Officer (SHO) Ghagga Amanpal Singh Virk said that Singh, who is currently lodged in Patiala’s Central Jail in a drug smuggling case, will be presented before the area magistrate in Samana on Monday to obtain a production warrant. A senior police officer in Patiala told on the condition of anonymity that on 7 June 2022, drug smuggler Amrik Singh sent a 140-page file to ISI agent Sher Khan in Pakistan on his mobile through his foreign SIM mobile. That information gave details about the Yol Army area specifically.
The file, apart from the maps of the army area, also contained several pictures and intelligence related to the available infrastructure. With the help of a cybercrime cell, many voice recordings were recovered by the police after seizing and searching the mobile of drug smuggler. In one of the recordings, an ISI agent is talking to Singh about having arranged a cross-border drone. In a call recording obtained from the phone, an agent is asking the said drug smuggler whether he has received the two AK-47 and 250 cartridges sent to him, to which Singh responds in affirmation. The conversation also had mentions about the maintenance of the weapons that the smuggler received and a suggestion to conduct a “dry run” to which Singh asked the person on the line to wait out.
The history behind the case
In May 2022, the police of Patiala police station Ghagga had recovered eight kg 207 grams of heroin from fields near Rajwahe Ki Patdi which is close to Dedhana village. In June 2022, the police arrested Patiala resident drug smuggler Amrik Singh, who admitted during police interrogation that he had hidden this heroin there. Later, during the investigation, the police found five mobiles of different companies from Amrik Singh. A cyber crime cell examined every phone seized by the police. During this, it was revealed that by inserting a foreign SIM in one of these mobile phone units, the drug peddler was in constant contact with ISI agents and was giving them intelligence information about the Indian Army.
