International drug smuggling racket busted, four held

NEWDELHI: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Sunday arrested four people and claimed to have busted a drugs smuggling racket that involved the illegal supply of sedatives and painkillers from Delhi to foreign countries for use as recreational drugs.

The bureau said they recovered a total of 41,000 sedatives and painkiller tablets in strips and another 2.4 kilos of medicines in loose form. Some of these were recovered from a courier firm in west Delhi on Friday, hours before they were to be apparently dispatched to the USA and Canada.

Madho Singh, zonal director of NCB’S Delhi unit estimated the total worth of the recovered drugs in India to be around ₹1 lakh. “The drugs were sold to consumers in foreign countries at 150 times its original price,”he said.

The officer said that the recovered drugs are not sold over the counter in India and could have only been obtained on prescription.

However, the gang had roped in some chemists in the NCR to illegally supply these medicines to them.

“The over-the-counter purchase of these drugs abroad is strictly regulated because of which there is a high demand from India,” said Singh.

The “elaborate” chain of the racket included a call centre based in Phillipines that connected buyers and sellers and facilitated payments.