Following a prolonged trail, Tamil Nadu’s South Zone Police tracked down and arrested two suspected key operators of the syndicate in Haryana’s Ambala Cantonment, exposing a discreet pipeline that moved narcotic tablets through postal and private courier services for over a year. What started as routine seizures of suspicious courier packages in three Tamil Nadu districts has unravelled into a nationwide narcotics syndicate operating across 19 states and Union Territories. The operation, codenamed Operation Deep Source, was launched in July 2026 after police received intelligence inputs about an organised drug trafficking network operating across several states.
Further investigation revealed links to another man identified as Sunil Kumar, who is based in Jammu and Kashmir and was allegedly facilitating the supply of the tablets to Tamil Nadu. Similar seizures were done in Thenkarai and other locations in Dindigul and Madurai, revealing a common pattern – all consignments were traced to Ambala Cantonment in Haryana. Police identified Mahender Singh Bisht as a key coordinator allegedly handling the dispatch of the consignments through an establishment at Mohan Nagar in Nanhera, Ambala Cantonment. Police sensitised postal authorities and courier agencies, asking them to identify suspicious parcels originating from outside Tamil Nadu. This intervention helped intercept multiple consignments and establish links between what initially appeared to be isolated cases of drug distribution. After securing a transit warrant from the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Ambala, the team brought the two accused to Tamil Nadu for further probe.
So far, 18 people have been arrested-including the latest two from Ambala on November 2. Police have registered seven cases across Tamil Nadu’s Madurai, Dindigul, and Theni districts, seizing 4,400 narcotic tablets in the process. The investigation gathered momentum after police intercepted a suspicious postal parcel at Kandamanur in Theni district on August 18. A special police team then travelled to Haryana and arrested Mahender Singh Bisht and Sunil Kumar on November 2.
“Our focus is not merely on catching the last person in the drug trafficking chain, but on reaching the source and dismantling the entire network via detailed investigation,” he said.
