India’s Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Saturday said it has busted an international heroin-smuggling racket with the arrest of a 38-year-old man who tried to escape from the country by boarding a Sri Lanka-bound flight from Tiruchy.

A statement from the NCB stated that A. Amjath Khan, of Ramanathapuram district, was apprehended by the NCB special team at the Tiruchy airport, Indian media reports said. His arrest has been made a day after his associate Rasool Mydeen was arrested at the Central Railway station in Chennai and found in possession of about one kg of heroin. Mydeen had reportedly travelled from  Delhi on  a train and reached Chennai Central Station on Friday carrying the contraband.

“Sensing Mydeen’s arrest, Khan was trying to escape to Lanka and booked an air ticket. Khan was the mastermind of the racket and he had visited several countries, including Kuwait. It appears that he had employed Mydeen to source the drugs from northern parts of the country and was trying to market them in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. There is also a possibility that he was planning to pass on the contraband to smugglers in other countries, where there is a huge demand for heroin,” Prem Anand Sinha, zonal director (Chennai) of NCB has told The New Indian Express.

The drugs were reportedly worth Indian Rupees 10 million in the international market. This is the second such heroin-smuggling racket busted by NCB in Chennai in the last two months.