Smuggled from Nigeria, ‘cooked' in Delhi, delivered at doorstep: Inside Rs 100-cr cocaine and MDMA racket

Indian Express

2 days ago

As soon as the call centre in Nigeria received a phone call from India, the operator noted down the request — how many kilograms of cocaine and MDMA were needed. Kallis, the call centre owner, would then send women to Delhi with packets of pure-grade narcotics taped to their bodies.
From the Delhi airport, the Indian handlers of Kallis – of African origin – would collect the packets, process them in 'kitchens' at South Delhi's Chattarpur, and hand them over to 'delivery agents', also Africans.
The agents would then prepare two batches of drugs, one to be transported to Australia and New Zealand, and the other for doorstep delivery in Delhi.
This was how, the police said, an intercontinental drug smuggling network operated, where orders were placed to Nigerian call centres on behalf of Indian customers for street-grade cocaine and MDMA.
On Friday, the Delhi Police Crime Branch said it has now dismantled the operation, by seizing drugs worth over Rs 100 crore and arresting five Nigerian nationals, who were allegedly working for cross-continental drug kingpin Callistus alias Kallis. The police identified the accused as Kameni Philipp, Adore, Victor, Kelechi Chikwe, and a person known as 'Tall Guy'.
The police sniffed out the trail on June 13 when a constable tracked a package to a godown in Moti Nagar. The package, containing more than 800 grams of cocaine, was wrapped among packed suits.
'The parcel led us to Cameroonian national Kameni Philipp (44) in Rajpura. We recovered 2,012 grams of cocaine from his possession,' Additional CP (Crime) Mangesh Kashyap said.
The police said that Phillip, who stays in Delhi with his wife and three children, had come to India in 2017 on a Nigerian passport. He returned to Cameroon in 2020 and came back again in March 2025 on a medical visa on the instructions of Kallis, his uncle.
Police said Phillip was sent to Delhi to be Kallis' eyes and ears as his uncle didn't trust his India operator – a Nigerian named Adore (53).
'His (Phillip's) associate, Victor, supplied MDMA, which they packaged into parcels bound for New Zealand and Australia. Later, Kallis provided him with pure Colombian cocaine bricks,' said Additional CP Kashyap.
According to police, Phillip distributed the cocaine in Delhi via Victor by using delivery boys — Kelechi Chikwe and 'Tall Guy'.
'The syndicate adopted a food delivery app-style model, dispatching deliveries based on live customer locations. Delivery agents followed a uniform dress code – checked shirts and black helmets – to maintain consistency,' Kashyap added.
The money collected from the delivery agents was given to Phillip, who would facilitate a hawala-like network to rewire the money back to Kallis using a Nigerian shell company, said police. Kallis also allegedly provided money exchange services to Indians in Nigeria who wished to send cash home.
'He would collect the desired amount in Naira from Indian clients, and direct Phillip to facilitate the payment in rupees – made from the drug trade – to the relatives of the client in India, cleaning his drug money in the process… The syndicate charged a commission of 3-5% on each such transaction. In the last six months alone, over 85 crore Naira was used as part of these illicit cross-border transactions,' Kashyap said.
Police said Adore was arrested from his Chattarpur kitchen with 146 grams of MDMA, 156 grams of cocaine and 1,028 grams of ganja. He has allegedly admitted to distributing 7 kg of cocaine and identified his associate Victor, a street-level distributor operating in Vasant Kunj. The police said that Victor admitted that Philip received 18 kg of pure cocaine from Kallis for distribution in India.