Police in Malda intercepted a youth from Bihar on Wednesday and seized narcotics worth around ₹1.3 crore from him.

Anand Raj, who is from the Khagaria district in Bihar, had checked into a hotel near the Malda Town station and was nabbed by the Englishbazar police. When they searched his room, 1.3kg of brown sugar (a derivative of heroin) was found.

During interrogation, Anand purportedly admitted that he had received the narcotics from Mobarak Sheikh, a resident of Jalalpur village under the jurisdiction of the Kaliachak police station.

“Anand was supposed to deliver the narcotics to Nitish Yadav, who is from the Bhagalpur district of Bihar, at the Jamalpur railway station. He was supposed to get some money for working as the carrier,” said a senior cop.

“Our officers will interrogate him to gather more information about the narcotics smuggling racket,” he added.

The hotel where Anand had checked in is owned by Goutam Das, a Trinamool Congress councillor of Englishbazar municipality. “We had no idea that the boarder was carrying narcotics in his luggage. Our staff checked his identity card, but not his belongings. We have asked our employees to be more careful before allowing any person in,” said Das.