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How Tamil Nadu police cracked down on a drug cartel
Drug peddlers from Tamil Nadu contacted a kingpin (Bende, who has now been arrested) of a drug cartel residing in Delhi after which payments were routed through bank accounts held by individuals in West Bengal, Nagaland and Mizoram, police said after staying in the national capital for 10 days for this operation
In a major crackdown on synthetic drug trafficking by the Tamil Nadu police, local accused led them to nab a supplier from Mumbai’s Dharavi that led to the arrest of foreign nationals, a 10-day operation in Delhi that unravelled connections from inside prison near Chennai revealing a sophisticated modus operandi involving an inter-state drug cartel controlled by foreign nationals.
They have been accused of supplying methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine amongst working professionals and college students here in the state. Drug peddlers from Tamil Nadu contacted a kingpin (Bende, who has now been arrested) of a drug cartel residing in Delhi after which payments were routed through bank accounts held by individuals in West Bengal, Nagaland and Mizoram, police said after staying in the national capital for 10 days for this operation. A parallel investigation revealed that parts of the cartel were being coordinated from inside Puzhal Prison near Chennai where they were found to have established contacts with foreign nationals.
The operation began in October 2025, when a special police team caught two accused, Muneer (28) and Javeed (38), red-handed with 55 grams of methamphetamine. Inspector General of Police of Tamil Nadu’s North Zone, Asra Garg formed a special team with senior police officials including Superintendent of Police, Tiruvallur District, Vivekananda Shukla and more than 15 other personnel drawn from other districts in the north zone.
They were chiefly tracking repeat offenders, monitoring recently released accused from jail, and dismantling inter-state and international drug cartels operating across Tamil Nadu.
A case was registered at Manavalanagar Police Station in Tiruvallur district under the NDPS Act, and they were remanded to judicial custody. “Investigation revealed that one of them frequently travelled to Mumbai and procured synthetic drugs from Dharavi, where a significant number of Tamil people reside, and supplied them in Bengaluru and Chennai,” said a senior police official part of the special team.
Following these leads, on October 23, police arrested 22-year-old Sibiraj—a dancer and popular Instagram influencer – with 54 grams of methamphetamine. “Several incriminating items, including electronic devices, drug-packaging materials, and lab apparatus were recovered from him,” the officer said. They discovered that he was purchasing drugs from a foreign-based supplier.
In a fast-paced investigation, in five days the Tiruvallur police caught the first foreign national in the case, Michael Nwasah Nnamdi (43) from Nigeria on October 28. He was living in Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district and was involved in the textile business. “Seven mobile phones, laptops, 2 passports, hundreds of medicines, and 39 grams of suspicious white crystalline substance were recovered from him,” a second officer in the special team said.
This led them to monitor certain individuals from Tamil Nadu who had deposited money into the bank accounts operated by the cartel. This led them to another foreign national, Kafita Yannick Tshimbombo (36), a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, living in Chennai. He was arrested on the very next day on October 29.
The web of how this syndicate operated was that drug peddlers from Tamil Nadu contacted a kingpin of the drug cartel residing in Delhi after which payments were routed through bank accounts held by individuals in West Bengal, Nagaland and Mizoram. After payments were confirmed, isolated GPS coordinates—mostly in Chennai and Bengaluru—were sent to buyers through foreign-registered mobile numbers, indicating locations where the contraband had been concealed.
“Agents engaged by the cartel placed the narcotics at these predetermined spots, enabling buyers to collect the drug packets without any direct physical contact,” the first officer said. “The cartel operated in a highly sophisticated and multi-layered manner, such that one stakeholder in the supply chain hardly knew the identity of the other stakeholders.”
Police identified the kingpin to be Bende (43), a native of Senegal, living in Delhi, who was coordinating the entire drug supply chain network. “He used multiple SIM cards, forged identities through encrypted social media networks, and frontline businesses—including textile shops—to mask his illegal trafficking of narcotics,” the first police officer said.
To break this chain and nab the accused at the earliest, the special team undertook 10 days of intensive surveillance in Delhi and Noida and fanned out to multiple suspected hideouts of foreign nationals. Finally, an apartment was traced as the suspected location of Bende. With the assistance of Delhi Police, a raid was conducted, which led to the arrest of Bende.
“Multiple mobile phones containing extensive data on supply networks across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and several North-Eastern states were seized during the operation,” the officer said. Bende was then brought to Tiruvallur and remanded to judicial custody on November 6.
A parallel investigation by the special team unravelled that parts of the cartel were being coordinated from inside Puzhal Prison, where foreign prisoners developed contacts with local accused and used them as their associates in the drug supply network.
“After getting released from prison, the Indian accused would act as drug carriers from outside the state into Tamil Nadu. Bende was also found to be in contact with a foreign national in Puzhal prison in a narcotics case, actively coordinating drug trafficking activities from within the prison,” the officer said.
31-year-old Matheen Ahmed who was recently released from Puzhal was introduced to foreign nationals while he was inside the prison. “After his release he was the mastermind for this drug cartel in Tamil Nadu. He frequently coordinated between local operatives and the foreign suppliers,” the officer quoted above said.
Police then arrested two drug carriers on November 26- Mohammad Afrath (22) operating along the Bengaluru–Chennai route and Mohammed Abdullah Asha (28) who used the same route via Andhra.
“We continue to dismantle such inter-state and international drug cartels through intensive investigation and coordinated field operations,” Garg said of the crackdown.
