The Narcotics Control Bureau arrested two foreigners with 2.7 litres of liquid cocaine from Thamel in the Capital on Monday.

South African woman Mpathoni Msane and another woman identified as Mercy, a native of Nagaland, India, were arrested with the liquid cocaine hidden in three shampoo bottles.

Msane had flown to Dubai from Johannesburg, South Africa, on 14 March. From Dubai she flew to Brazil, picked up the drug consignment, and returned to Dubai before taking a Kathmandu-bound flight on 24 March, the NCB investigators said.

Mercy had arrived in Kathmandu on Saturday and met Msane at Chhetrapati. It was not immediately clear if Mercy and Msane knew each other form before or had just met. Deputy Inspector General of Police Jay Bahadur Chand, the NCB chief, said Msane was using Kathmandu as a transit point before smuggling the cocaine, worth over Rs 50 million in the international market, to European countries, including Italy and Netherlands.

This is not the first instance of Europe-bound drugs and their smugglers getting captured in Kathmandu.

In April last year, the NCB had arrested Malaysian woman Marina Binti Jamaluddin with 11 kg cocaine from the Tribhuvan International Airport. She was caught as she was about to leave for Rome, Italy, transiting through Dubai.