BC police seek Interpol red notice for cocaine smuggler who escaped to India

SURREY, B.C. – Police in British Columbia are asking Interpol to post a red notice for the arrest and return of a Surrey man who escaped to India after being convicted of smuggling cocaine into Canada from the United States.

RCMP say 60-year-old truck driver Raj Kumar Mehmi was sentenced in absentia by a B.C. provincial court judge to 15 years in prison in November after his arrest in 2017 for smuggling 80 kilograms of cocaine.

A red notice asks member countries to help locate, arrest and extradite a person to face criminal charges, and India is a member of Interpol.

Police say the 80 sealed bricks of cocaine were hidden inside a truck owned and driven by Mehmi while he was at the Pacific Highway border crossing into Metro Vancouver.

Mehmi was convicted of smuggling and trafficking in September 2022, but police say he boarded a flight from Vancouver to New Delhi a month later before he could be sentenced.

Police say a Canada-wide warrant for Mehmi has also been issued, and they are seeking the Interpol notice "as a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest" the man pending extradition or other legal actions.