JALANDHAR: A Canadian national of Punjabi origin has been arrested in the US with a massive cache of drugs. Inderjit Bhinder, a truck driver, was arrested in Detroit with 41 kg of cocaine and more than 1 kg of heroin . At current exchange rates, the contraband is worth $6 million or more than Rs 43 crore. After changing his statement several times, Bhinder told US Homeland Security agents that he was transporting the consignment from the US to Canada.The arrest has taken place at a time when there is growing concern in the Punjabi diaspora in Canada over involvement of their men in criminal activities, including drug smuggling.In a similar incident in December 2017, Canadian border security officials had recovered 100 kg of cocaine at the US-Canada border from a truck belonging to a Punjabi origin couple – Gurminder Singh Toor,31, and Kirandeep Kaur Toor, 26. They were living in California and were charged with smuggling drugs into Canada. Officials had said at the time that this was the largest suspected cocaine seizure in Alberta PIO stopped for traffic violationOnly in August another Indian origin man identified as Randall Singh,32, of Long Island was booked for selling cocaine and possessing stolen property in New York.The criminal complaint revealed that a Michigan trooper had stopped Bhinder’s truck for a traffic violation but got suspicious because of Bhinder’s excessively nervous behaviour. The officer started searching the truck and his accompanying dog immediately caught the strong odour of drugs, kept in three bags not far from the driver’s seat. Later, officers also found two phones and a GPS device along with some papers from the truck.In his initial questioning, Bhinder told investigators that he entered the US from Canada on September 17 and had driven to a nearby Michigan rest stop. When he returned to his truck after a break, he saw three unknown men standing in front of his truck who could have planted the bags in the truck. However, he later accepted that he had met the men and that he was aware the bags contained drugs meant to be transported from the US to Canada.

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