JOHOR BARU: There was no door to the back room, so Customs officers had to step on an overturned pail and climb through a window to gain entrance into it.
They searched the room and found contraband cigarettes stashed inside a drawer during a raid at a sundry shop in Taman Universiti, Skudai here the other day.
During the raid, one of the Indonesian workers there led the officers to a back room that doubled as their living quarters.
The officers then searched the room and found seven cartons of cigarettes stashed under a pile of clothes kept in a drawer.
An Indonesian male worker was detained to help in investigations.
The raid was part of an ongoing Ops Outlet crackdown on retailers selling illegal cigarettes.
Almost 1,000 retailers nationwide have been detained for selling illegal cigarettes.
About half of those arrested have been taken to court since the Customs Department launched Ops Outlet on March 5 last year.