NCB Jammu seizes 5.16 kg heroin and arrests a suspected supplier in Leh

The Narcotics Control Bureau’s Jammu unit said on Wednesday it had seized 5.160 kg of heroin and arrested three men in a case it describes as a cross-border cartel. Two occupants of a vehicle stopped at Panjtirthi, in central Jammu, on 22 August were residents of Baramulla. A third Baramulla man, named as the suspected supplier, was arrested in Leh on 24 August.

The Economic Times, citing the bureau, put the street value at ₹11 crore. The NCB said the heroin is believed to have been produced in Pakistan and walked or driven through the Uri sector. That is a preliminary finding, not a completed trial record. The bureau said it is now looking for the people who paid for the load, the drivers who moved it, local receivers and the planned retail chain.

Three seizures in two weeks

The same office recorded 438 grams on 12 August and 603 grams on 13 August. The 5.16 kg stop is larger than those two combined. Officials presented the Leh arrest as proof that the unit is chasing organisers, not only carriers. The suspected supplier was found 700 kilometres from the Jammu checkpoint and two days after the car was opened.

Panjtirthi is not a border post. It is a city intersection. A load that has already passed Uri, crossed the Kashmir bowl and reached Jammu city has cleared several layers of security before the NCB car steps in. That geography is why the bureau is talking about a chain rather than a single intercept.

What the next filings must show

Heroin cases in this belt often stall at the courier. The useful documents from here are the call-data maps, the money trail and any statement that names a handler on the other side of Uri. Without those, “cross-border cartel” remains a label on a press note.

Baramulla to Leh is a known winter and summer route for people who want to leave the Valley without passing the same checkpoint twice. The fact that the third man was in Ladakh does not, by itself, prove he ran the network. It does show that NCB Jammu treated the 22 August car as the start of a pursuit, not the end of a seizure. The 5.16 kg is the hard number. The Uri origin is the claim that still has to be proved in court.