As all routes connecting J&K with the rest of the country have been sealed due to ongoing 21-day lockdown, the drug mafia is using ambulances and fake prescription slips of doctors to travel on the highways in guise of patients to avoid checking.

Arrest of three narco smugglers, travelling in an ambulance three days back, has exposed the new modus operandi adopted by the drug mafia to smuggle contraband drugs, especially narcotics, from one place to another.

Sources said that after apprehending a drug peddler, who was using fake doctors’ prescriptions, to travel on the highway during lockdown, police had constituted special teams to track down narco-smugglers who have been using ambulances for smuggling drugs.

“Three days back a police team intercepted an ambulance bearing a Punjab number in which three persons were travelling,” a source said, adding, “During checking it was found that the person claiming to be a patient is a dreaded narco smuggler and his other two associates are notorious drug peddlers.”

According to police, apart from contraband heroin, one revolver was also recovered from the ambulance.

“We are questioning the trio to ascertain how many times they travelled on the highway applying similar modus operandi and what they had smuggled so far,” police sources said, adding that with the arrest of three persons the nefarious designs of the drug mafia had been exposed.

On March 31, police had arrested a drug peddler who used doctor’s prescription to travel on the highway.