Concerned over a sharp increase in cocaine seizures, FM Nirmala Sitharaman asks probe agencies to go after the "big fish."
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00:00Cocaine has also started coming in a big way in this country.
00:03And is it because India is now becoming a consuming country?
00:06I've been closely monitoring the detection of smuggling in India,
00:11particularly of drugs and particularly of gold.
00:15Smuggler cannot be smarter than you.
00:17He will leave a trail.
00:19He will leave some kind of a, you know, evidence for you to touch.
00:30I've been closely monitoring the detection of smuggling in India,
00:54particularly of drugs and particularly of gold.
00:57When I was looking at the two bar charts which show gold imports into India
01:04and also another which showed gold smuggling in India,
01:10I briefly saw a connect which may be an illusion to me,
01:14you may correct me subsequently,
01:16but I thought there seems to be some kind of a relationship
01:22between when smuggling gets detected or big numbers get detected,
01:28when therefore there is an indication that there is more smuggling of a particular item,
01:33in this case gold,
01:34either before it or after it, there seems to be a very high import of gold.
01:41And I'm going to be a bit mischievous in saying something.
01:44If there's a pattern emerging even in the detection of smuggling,
01:48it's convenient for me to notice that last month there's been lots of imports
01:52and therefore this month I'm highly alert and I'm able to detect more.
01:56Or I'm anticipating that because Akshaya Tritiya is coming,
02:00people will consume more gold, more imports are happening,
02:02I should be alert.
02:03I don't know what works.
02:06But if in our country 800 kgs are being detected on an average per year,
02:16I'm sure this is an elephant in the room.
02:20Cocaine has also started coming in a big way in this country.
02:24And again here I want to ask a question.
02:27Is it because India is no longer just a transit country for smugglers?
02:32And is it because India is now becoming a consuming country?
02:37That you have paths for such things to come into the country
02:42which have not had a recorded history of that level of smuggling such as cocaine now.
02:49And here again, is it because it's no longer transit but it is a consuming country?
02:54There's a cause and effect relationship.
02:56During the Azadi Kamarth Mahotsav,
03:00DRI could tell me that in several parts of the country,
03:05I think it was 14 destinations,
03:07where you destroyed in public view more than 44,000 kgs of drug which was seized.
03:17Unbelievable.
03:20That is not something which India would have known about DRI as your work
03:29that we were able to destroy in public view with media,
03:34with eminent citizens of that part of the country,
03:38all sitting there and watching,
03:40and the entire finance ministry team sitting in South Block and North Block and watching it.
03:45This was one singular message that we were able to give that DRI is alert
03:52and it shall not allow such illegal contraband goods coming into this country.
03:59And I would think that is the kind of spirit and momentum
04:03that DRI has to maintain even now.
04:07I would think that you would make sure
04:12that you shall not allow the smuggler to be smarter than you all.
04:17Smuggler cannot be smarter than you.
04:20He will leave a trail.
04:22He will leave some kind of evidence for you to touch
04:28and he will certainly give you an indication of the modus operandi.
04:32But the question which remains in the mind of the ordinary citizen is,
04:37but what happened?
04:38How many people went to the prison for it?
04:40TK, what happened?
04:41But after that, how many people were actually taken to task?
04:45And even better, the question is, what happened?
04:48Who's actually the big fish behind it?
04:50You're catching all those small fries, the peddlers, the traffickers, the mules.
04:57Is that sufficient?
04:59To gain public confidence, that's not sufficient at all.
05:03To gain public confidence, that's not sufficient at all.