X-RAY OF SHOE LEADS TO RECORD HEROIN BUST

It All Started With A Shoe.

An X-ray scan found something amiss in the sole of a shoe in a
traveller's suitcase at Calgary airport last week.

A border officer went in for a closer look.

"It had a hollowed-out sole," said Lisa White, spokeswoman for the
Canada Border Services Agency. "There were drugs in there."

It was heroin, and by the time police and border officers dug deeper
into the suitcase and two others, they had uncovered Alberta's
largest heroin bust -- 7.8 kilograms worth around $2.3 million.
Virtually all of it was hidden in the suitcases' false bottoms.

Police said a man and a woman left India on May 14 and flew to
London. From there, they took a British Airways flight to Calgary.

It was around 7:15 p.m. on May 14 that border officers in Calgary
pulled the pair aside for a secondary search.

The seized drugs would have yielded around 77,800 individual doses,
police said. Each dose has an approximate street value of $30.

Police can't say for sure where the drugs were headed, but it's
possible it was Vancouver, said Sgt. Patrick Webb, spokesman for the
RCMP. "That's certainly one of the questions to be determined."

Sgt. Steve McKenna of the Vancouver police's drug section said his
city has seen a drastic drop in heroin over the past several years,
much of it replaced by cocaine and methamphetamines.

But a substantial amount of heroin does make it to Vancouver.

"We've found it commonplace to have heroin and cocaine dropped in
central provinces and driven out here," McKenna said.

Heroin has not traditionally been a major drug find in Alberta.

The previous largest heroin bust was 700 grams in June 2006, at the
Montana border, White said.

Bakshish Singh Ghai, 21, and Aneelvir Grewal, 18, were charged with
importing and possessing a controlled substance. The two Canadians
are scheduled to appear in court next week.