PETALING JAYA: An attempt to smuggle heroin hidden among frozen durians was busted by Customs enforcement officers at the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah airport in Subang on Monday.
The heroin weighing a total of 6.13kg had a street value of RM953,529, said Royal Malaysian Customs Department’s Central Zone Assistant Director General Datuk Zulkarnain Mohamed Yusuf.
He said the department received a tip-off of the possible smuggling modus operandi involving hard drugs and subsequently the department’s investigation unit from the central zone conducted a raid at a cargo company at about 6.15pm the same day.
“Several customs officers, in the presence of cargo agents as well as the cargo company’s representatives, conducted a check on 20 styrofoam boxes which were designated to be shipped to Hong Kong.
“Checks on the boxes found them to contain packed frozen durians. Upon opening, four of the styrofoam boxes were found to contain four solid blocks suspected to be heroin which were wrapped with translucent plastic packaging.
“Following the discovery (of the drugs), we detained a 34-year-old woman whose name was contained on the shipping manifesto,” he said at a press conference here today.
Checks of other styrofoam boxes via a drug detection equipment saw the Customs officers retrieving a total of 178 white blocks, all weighing 6.13 kilograms, worth RM953,529, said Zulkarnain.
“The syndicate was seeking to dupe the authorities by making a false declaration that the items to be exported were identified as being fresh fruit durian to be exported to Hong Kong.
“The woman has been remanded for five days for further investigation under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 for drug trafficking,” he said.
Under provisions of the act, those in possession of 15 gram or more heroin face mandatory death sentence.