Man with $34,000 cocaine under wig arrested at airport

Abiodun OBA

The Colombian wearing the wig where he hides half kilo cocaine

A 65 year-old Colombian with half a kilo of cocaine hidden under an over-sized wig or toupee that he wore has been arrested at Barcelona’s international airport.

Arriving on a flight from Bogota, the man who looked nervous and had a disproportionately large hairpiece under his hat attracted police attention.

The police found a package stuck to his head with about 30,000 euros ($34,000) of cocaine.

“There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls,” said the police statement on Tuesday.

Over 100 kilos of cocaine were seized by Spanish police at the Barcelona-El Prat airport in 2018.

The Colombian was detained at the end of June after being charged with crime against public health.

In a related development, a Nigerian Bonaventure Nzubechukwu Nwude 35, suspected to be a member of an international drug cartel has been arrested by India’s Anti-Narcotics Cell in Mumbai.

Nwude was arrested Monday night, after he received the cocaine parcel from a Mozambican in Delhi.

The seized cocaine worth $171,000 is ’96 per cent pure”, said police DCP Shivdeep Lande.

“This drug cartel is being run from African countries whose members used to visit India to deliver the contrabands. They hide the drug capsules in their abdomen by swallowing them”, Lande said.

Nwude, who had visited India in 2002 and 2004, was scheduled to leave for Taiwan from Mumbai.