A 37-year-old Nigerian man identified as Uchenna Israel Obutt has been arrested in India with 600 grams of heroin that he shaped in the form of eggs to avoid detection, Delhi Police said on Friday.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (north-east), Atul Kumar Thakur, said Obutt had been released on bail in February 2018 after spending three years in jail in a fake visa case.

The Hindustan Times quoted the DCP as saying Obutt had been living in India since 2015 and posed as a tiles businessman to carry out drug dealings.

“In 2015, he was arrested by Delhi Police’s crime branch in a case of cheating and under the Foreigners Act,” the DCP said.

Upon his release from jail, Obutt allegedly continued trading in drugs.

“Of late, he wanted to expand his drug dealings in the trans-Yamuna area,” said the officer.

Obutt was arrested from the Nand Nagri Flyover in north-east Delhi on Thursday afternoon after the police received a tip-off that he would be carrying heroin with him.

Initially, the police spotted Obutt carrying a crate of eggs in a bag, which he claimed were chicken eggs. But when the police took a closer look, they found it suspicious.

“The eggs were not only brown and a bit larger in size compared to the usual chicken eggs; they also had a rough surface,” said another investigator.

The police checked further to realise that the dozen eggs were actually heroin, whose market worth the police pegged at R 1.25 crore (about N64 million).

Police said that Obutt, who lives in Dwarka in Delhi, has been booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

“We are trying to get to the source of these drugs,” said the investigator.