A Kenyan woman passenger was arrested at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport for allegedly smuggling cocaine.
She was intercepted carrying 1.4 kilos of cocaine valued at approximately Sh8 million, officials reported.
In Kenya, a kilo of cocaine is estimated to be worth between Sh4 million and Sh5 million, whereas in the international market, its value can escalate to as much as Sh12 million, according to police.
The Kenyan national arrived via a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Mumbai on December 28, Thursday, and was apprehended by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officers.
"The ingenious concealment of the drugs involved two black polythene packets cleverly placed within a hair conditioner bottle and a body wash bottle," DRI said according to local media.
The passenger was arrested under the provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985 and subsequently remanded to judicial custody.
The release stated that further investigation is ongoing. DRI officers, acting on intelligence, targeted the specific passenger and recovered 1,490 grams of a white powdery substance, believed to be cocaine, from the woman's luggage.
Throughout 2023, several Kenyans were arrested in drug-related cases abroad.
For example, in June, Indian authorities detained a Kenyan woman at the New Delhi airport for smuggling 2.5 kilograms of cocaine from Addis Ababa, concealed in whisky bottles.
On September 24, a Kenyan car dealer was arrested in Sri Lanka, at the Bandaranaike International Airport with 4 kilograms of cocaine estimated worth Sh24 million.
Sources said the seizure is a warning Kenya is now a major transit route for the narcotics probably destined for Europe and Asia.
But the detectives said the latest trend of seizures of narcotics locally points to a dangerous scenario that needs attention from authorities.
In 2019, then European Union Ambassador to Kenya Simon Mordue said the Kenyan port of Mombasa accounted for 30 per cent of illegal heroin smuggled into the EU market.
Most of the heroin in the country originates from Afghanistan through the Indian Ocean while cocaine originates from South America.
Kenyan security agencies seized the second-biggest haul of cocaine weighing 100 kilos and valued at Sh598 million in 2016 in Mombasa that was disguised as sugar.
