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Shanghai police revealed Thursday that they cracked the city's first drug trafficking case involving foreigners. One suspect died when bags of heroin he had swallowed broke open.
The Shanghai Public Security Bureau said three men and two women from Uzbekistan allegedly swallowed heroin packets in Yunnan Province to smuggle to Shanghai.
A total of 3.15 kilograms of heroin was seized when they checked into a local hotel in late May, said Yang Ye, a bureau spokeswoman.
"Our investigators received tips in April that several foreigners were plotting to transport drugs in their bodies," Yang said.
Police spent a month investigating the Uzbekistanians and caught them when they were excreting the drug pockets in their hotel room. They already excreted 700 pills of the drug by the time police broke into the room.
"We immediately sent them to a hospital for the sake of their lives," Yang said. At the hospital they excreted 300 additional heroin pills.
The suspects flew from Beijing to Ruili of Yunnan, where they spent a night swallowing dozens of bags. Each bag contained 200 heroin pills. The dead man was believed to have swallowed an additional 100 pills "to make more money," Yang said.
Several bags broke inside the man, resulting in a heroin overdose. He died in the hospital.
Police in Shanghai are still investigating the case, but they have shifted the focus to locating the heroin supplier and the local buyers.
(eastday.com June 27, 2003)
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