Customs officers in the Surkhandarya region have thwarted a major attempt to smuggle a substantial shipment of narcotics into Uzbekistan from neighboring Afghanistan. According to the State Customs Committee, the illicit consignment was intercepted at the Ayritom border checkpoint during an intensive inspection.

The incident occurred on October 1 at approximately 10:30 PM local time when an empty freight vehicle arrived at the border post. The truck, operated by a 33-year-old resident of the Termez district, aroused suspicion after a trained sniffer dog alerted handlers to the vehicle. Acting on the detection, customs personnel dispatched the heavy transport for an advanced, deep-level inspection, which uncovered 98 concealed packages beneath the floor of the trailer.

The smugglers had gone to considerable lengths to evade specialized inspection equipment. To bypass the cargo X-ray scanners installed at the border, the contraband packages had been meticulously wrapped in four layers consisting of heavy polyethylene, aluminum foil, and adhesive tape. Despite these precautions, the concealment failed to evade detection by the customs unit.

Forensic verification revealed that 79 of the confiscated packages contained hashish with a combined weight of 42 kilograms and 335 grams, while the remaining 19 packages held 10 kilograms and 260 grams of opium. The total volume of the seized drugs reached 52 kilograms and 595 grams, an amount estimated by authorities to represent roughly 340,000 individual doses.

Official records from the Customs Committee state that coordinated efforts among law enforcement agencies across the country have led to the seizure of more than 1.9 tons of illegal narcotics since the beginning of this year. An investigation has been launched to determine the broader supply network linked to this smuggling run.

Source: www.gazeta.uz