German customs have busted a Nigerian man travelling across Europe by bus after an X-ray revealed that he had swallowed over a kilogramme of cocaine to smuggle it across the border.

The arrest happened in the town of Bad Honnef, which is located in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, when German customs officers from Cologne inspected a coach taking passengers across Europe.

The long-distance bus was going from the Belgian capital Brussels to Croatia via the German cities of Cologne and Munich, when the customs officers searched it on 26th November, according to the police, who released a statement on Monday 6th December.

They said that they noticed a 39-year-old Nigerian man, who has not been named due to strict local privacy laws, while they were checking all passengers and their luggage.

The police said that a drug test was carried out on the Nigerian man after they noticed “contradicting information about his multi-day trip”, “his mother’s behaviour” and that he had a relatively “small amount of luggage”.

The test came back positive for cocaine with the police adding that the man was then taken to hospital for an X-ray to be performed, saying: “The X-ray at a nearby hospital ultimately confirmed our suspicion.”

The police added: “The man’s entire gastrointestinal tract was full of drug packs, so-called body packs. After the drugs had been eliminated, it was clear that the man had 72 of these body packs, each containing just under 14 grammes of cocaine, which he had swallowed.”

The police photograph of the X-ray shows the man’s body apparently full of small packets.

Jens Ahland, a press spokesman for the main customs office in Cologne added that finding over a kilogramme of cocaine in the man’s body set a new, “sad record” for them.

He also warned that smuggling drugs through one’s body is very risky and that should just one of the packets have ruptured inside the man’s stomach, there would have been very little that the officers could have done to help him and he would have died.

After his arrest, the suspect was handed over to the customs investigation office in the nearby city of Essen.

The investigation is ongoing. It is unclear if the suspect had been formally charged at the time of writing. It is also unclear if the man’s final destination was in Germany or in Croatia.