Five suspected smugglers were held with over 4,000 bottles of cough syrup from Madhughat, a locality off NH12, in Malda on Sunday night.

Police sources said the cough syrups were smuggled from Uttar Pradesh to Malda and the consignment was to be to delivered in Bangladesh.

“The quintet were found loading cartons of the bottles from one pick-up truck to another similar vehicle. One of the trucks bore registration plates of Uttar Pradesh. All the five have been arrested and 4,200 bottles of the syrup have been seized along with the vehicles,” said a police officer.

The estimated price of the seized consignment is around Rs 8.5 lakh.

The arrested quintet are Sezbar Sheikh, Hashmat Sheikh and Sheikbar Sheikh, all residents of Malda district, and Pappu Paswan and Mukesh Kumar Dubey, hail from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

“We need to find out whether they are associated with any smuggling racket,” the officer added.

In another incident, the BSF nabbed two persons with two kilos of cannabis worth around Rs 45,000 from Pannapur, near the Bangladesh border, under Habibpur police station of the Malda district on Sunday night.

Two cell phones, four Indian SIM cards and a memory card, were also seized from Hira Mohan Biswas and Bishal Mondal, both residents of Dalla in Habibpur.

Later, both were handed over to the Habibpur police station. A case has been registered and police have initiated a probe, said sources.