Date Rape dope in kettles for tea.

THE innocuous kettle can not only make tea, but also work as a receptacle for smuggling ketamine -- a veterinary medicine more famous for as a rave party drug. It is internationally known by its pseudonyms ' K' or the ' Date Rape Drug'. On September 28, when the baggage of Allan Joseph Dominic, 29, and Charles Rosario Jeffry, 22, went through the scanners at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, a bunch of tea kettles packed in neat boxes as export items were detected.

The customs and other airport officials didn't give much heed to it until one of them noticed a powdery substance in the cavity between the insulating layers of the kettles.

Soon, a meticulous check was conducted and it revealed that 47 kg of ketamine was hidden inside the kettles. That much of the drug could fetch Rs 16 lakh in the India, but Rs 10 crore internationally.

Ketamine hydrochloride or ketamine is a drug used as a veterinary anaesthetic for cows and buffaloes. Internationally, it is the latest rave party drug.

Possession of ketamine is not an offence in India, but its export requires approval of the narcotics commissioner.

Dominic and Rosario, who were bound for Bangkok in a Thai Airways flight the next day, were apprehended by customs officials at Chennai Airport and brought to Delhi, where their kettles were checked.

The amount of ketamine seized from Dominic and Jeffry was huge. But they belong to a steady stream of passengers accused of attempting to smuggle Chennai- made ketamine.

Almost two weeks after their arrest, Muthalif Mohammed of Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district was caught with the same drug in the departure hall of Thai Airways in Chennai.

He had concealed the drug between the inner and outer walls of milk cookers.

In September, Rajesh Subramanian, also of Chennai, was caught trying to smuggle 19 kg of ketamine to Malaysia.

Over the past several months, the customs department in Delhi has confiscated ketamine worth Rs 40 crore and arrested nine persons.

" The smugglers keep improvising on their techniques and keep changing their routes when they get a whiff of increased vigil at a particular airport," a senior customs official said.

However, the vigil and a number of arrests have the helped curb the smuggling.

Senior customs officials admit that the real big catches continued to evade them.

" People arrested at the airport are couriers. They were into smuggling to tide over their financial problems. Many of them didn't even know what they are carrying. The real culprits get their payments through hawala," the official added.

Mahadev Kerketta of Ashok Nagar in Chennai had confessed after his arrest that he had smuggled ketamine to Malaysia on nine previous occasions.

He was in a financial hole and when a man called Seenu approached him, he agreed to do the job for Rs 5,000. Kerkatta made regular trips to Malaysia, but did not know anything about Seenu.

He only had Seenu's mobile phone number, but investigators later found that it was registered under a fake address that led to a vacant plot.

Similarly, another arrested man, said he was also paid Rs 5,000 for each trip abroad.

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