Illustrative Image: Vigin Varghese (Photo: Facebook / Vigin Vergese) | Fruit boxes that were seized, containing cocaine worth R4.3-billion. (Photo: Directorate of Revenue Intelligence) 
A fresh produce importer in India may soon know whether he faces more time in state custody in a case involving R4.3-billion worth of drugs that arrived in that country in fruit consignments sent from South Africa three years ago.
In early October 2022, police in India discovered methamphetamine and cocaine, worth billions of rands, hidden between oranges that were imported there from this country.
A few days later, they found another consignment of cocaine, worth about R1.1-billion, hidden between green apples also sent there from South Africa.
An accused, Vigin Varghese, was previously arrested in India, where he remains criminally charged and at the centre of a legal battle.
In South Africa, meanwhile, the saga has sparked claims of fraud and denials of wrongdoing – that another individual is to blame.
It is not clear how far police in this country have got with investigations into the narcotrafficking or holding anyone to account for it.
In 2022, South African Police Service (SAPS) officers pledged to help their Indian counterparts investigate the overcall case.
Daily Maverick has struggled to get an update from the national SAPS on what has happened since then.
A query sent on 17 November 2025 and another on 8 December (with a prompt the following day) have not been responded to.
Over the past few months, attention in law enforcement has been on an unprecedented scandal involving accusations that a drug cartel known as the Big Five has infiltrated South Africa’s criminal justice system and politics.
/file/attachments/orphans/About-50kg-of-cocaine-was-discovered-in-India-in-a-consignment-of-green-apples-from-South-Africa-in-an-interception-in-October-2022_254549.jpg "In 2022, consignments of fruit from South Africa were intercepted in India, and authorities there said drugs worth R4.3-billion were discovered in the imports. (Photo: Directorate of Revenue Intelligence)")
In this broader arena, there are suspicions that police officers are paid bribes to manipulate, expedite or quash investigations.
Meanwhile, new details of the 2022 fruit-drug interceptions are contained in a 13 November 2025 Supreme Court of India judgment focused on Varghese.
Daily Maverick has also managed to contact a fruit exporter named in the judgment, who is based in South Africa and who denied knowing that the fruit consignments contained drugs.
‘No evidence’ vs ‘incriminating materials’
Varghese has been in a battle with the State in India because he has tried to secure his release on bail.
In January and again in March this year, a high court in India delivered orders relating to the fruit-drug crackdowns.
These orders saw Varghese being granted bail, but the State appealed that, and last month it was ruled that the high court must reconsider its findings.
The high court, in initially granting Varghese bail, found there was no evidence confirming that he knew cocaine was concealed among the apple consignments.
And Varghese had pointed out that he had cooperated during the investigation and had no criminal history.
But the State’s stance was that “incriminating materials” including call data and statements, “clearly implicate… [him]… and reveal his active participation in facilitating import and concealment of narcotic consignments.”
Varghese is out on bail because of the court orders from earlier this year, so it was decided that this arrangement could remain in place pending the high court’s new decision, which was expected within a month of the judgment, in other words, by around the end of next week.
Parts of last month’s Supreme Court of India judgment provide insight into the trafficking investigation in India connected to South Africa.
R3.2bn drug discovery
It said that Varghese was a director of a company, Yummito International Foods India Pvt. Ltd.
A LinkedIn profile under that company name says it was established in 2017 and had branches in the United Arab Emirates and India.
Its Facebook page includes photographs suggesting that Yummito had been involved in sourcing various fruits, including mangoes, mandarins and plums, from South Africa.
A Facebook profile under Varghese’s name suggested that in the months before his arrest he met two South African government representatives in India and discussed fresh produce imports.
Last month’s judgment from India delves into the fruit-drug interceptions.
It said that nearly 200kg of methamphetamine and 9kg of cocaine were seized on 2 October 2022.
An Indian Finance Ministry press release, though, said this had happened the day before, on 1 October, and described it as “one of the biggest seizures of amphetamine and cocaine in the country”.
Daily Maverick previously reported that the crackdown had involved authorities in India intercepting a truck after it left a cold storage facility in Vashi, Navi Mumbai.
It had been transporting containers of Valencia oranges that were imported from South Africa – it was among these that stashes of methamphetamine and cocaine, which Daily Maverick previously reported were worth roughly R3.2-billion, were found.
Last month’s judgment said the drugs were “allegedly traceable to the same network involving” Varghese and another individual, Mansoor Thachaparamban.
It said that Varghese had described Thachaparamban “as his overseas collaborator who arranged the shipments” of fruit.
Thachaparamban was born in India and has South African citizenship.
He is based in Gauteng and, in a typed statement that Daily Maverick has seen, denied knowing that drugs were in the fruit exports.
Thachaparamban pointed to another individual as being involved.
The Supreme Court of India judgment does not outright implicate Thachaparamban in criminality.
Apples, pears and cocaine
It said that a few days after the early October 2022 drug crackdown in India, more narcotics were found.
On 5 October that year, officers with India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence followed up on information that saw them intercept a refrigerated shipping container with pallets of pears and green apples “imported from South Africa” in it.
Over the next two days, 6 and 7 October 2022, the container was opened, the cartons in it were separated, and during this process 50 bricks of what turned out to be cocaine were discovered.
The judgment said statements were taken from Varghese.
/file/attachments/orphans/The-cocaine-found-hidden-among-apples-from-South-Africa-in-2022-resulted-in-a-fruit-importer-being-arrested-in-India_143588.jpg "Authorities in India said they intercepted drugs, including cocaine, that were concealed between consignments of fruit from South Africa in 2022. (Photo: Directorate of Revenue Intelligence)")
“It is alleged that he admitted to ordering the consignment from a South African supplier, to having imported the goods using the Import Export Code of his firm, and for supervising the clearance and delivery operations through his logistics handlers,” it said.
The “South African supplier” appears to be Thachaparamban.
Last month, he alleged to Daily Maverick that another individual, originally from India and who operated in South Africa, was involved in the saga.
That individual’s name will be withheld here because Daily Maverick has not been able to contact him. (A cellphone number said to be his did not work.)
Thachaparamban, who was apparently questioned by police in South Africa after the 2022 interceptions in India, detailed his version of events in a statement dated May 2023.
‘Big politicians and police’
It effectively said he had sometimes used the individual as an agent to source fruit and ensure it was loaded into containers for export.
Thachaparamban said that in 2022 he planned to export 60 pallets of oranges and pears to Varghese but claimed that the individual asked if he could add four pallets of Valencia oranges to the consignment.
According to Thachaparamban, he agreed and reduced his planned export by four pallets to allow the individual to add his.
He said he subsequently found out that authorities searched the fruit exported to India and found cocaine in the pallets of oranges that the individual had sent there.
Thachaparamban claimed the second drug consignment was also found in pallets of fruit that the individual had introduced to a container without his knowledge.
He alleged that the individual told him that “big politicians and police” in India were involved with those behind the drug smuggling and that the case there would be thrown out of court.
(Daily Maverick has seen a statement, purportedly by the individual, dated October 2022 and made in Johannesburg, which says he was unaware that the fruit consignments contained cocaine.)
Thachaparamban was of the view that the individual had acted fraudulently.
A complaint was lodged with the police in Gauteng.
The reference number for this complaint was supplied to Daily Maverick.
Gauteng police spokesperson Captain Tintswalo Sibeko said that, based on it, “a case of fraud has been opened, and the case has been closed as undetected, pending further evidence”.
This essentially meant that investigations had not produced enough evidence to identify a suspect.
Without any official updated SAPS comment on the overall case, it also suggests that no one in South Africa has been held to account for the drugs that ended up in India.
UK convictions
Other narco-fruit consignments left this country in late 2022.
The month after the drugs from South Africa were found in India, 49kg of cocaine, concealed in a container of oranges from this country, was intercepted at the UK’s Port of Felixstowe in November 2022.
That overall case involved other drug interceptions.
It resulted in Anand Tripathi, who ran an export and import company, and Varun Bhardwaj, who worked with him, being sentenced in the UK to 15 and 19 years in jail, respectively, in December 2023. (In 2024, these sentences were reportedly increased.)
At the time, the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said: “The scheme involved the pair using their freight company as a cover to clear shipping containers that held drugs and cigarettes and diverting them from their intended destination to a warehouse they controlled.”
Richard Partridge of the service added that “there were clearly others involved in the scheme who haven’t yet been identified”. DM