‘Posh’ drugs sold like hot cakes

While Hyderabad has more demand for marijuana, ‘posh’ drugs like cocaine and heroin are more in circulation in Gachibowli and Madhapur of Cyberabad, said the city police officials. Ganja was not produced in the state, but was being smuggled from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, they added.

In 2020, the Hyderabad city police officials arrested 213 individuals, including a foreign national, who were found peddling, smuggling and selling narcotics in the city. A total of 851 kilos of ganja, 40 grams of charas and 6 grams of cocaine along with 8 grams of MDMA was caught by the city police in Hyderabad last year, as per the annual report.

There is a high demand for ganja in Hyderabad, whereas areas on the outskirts in Cyberabad have consumers of cocaine, LSD and other costly drugs, according to P. Radhakrishna Rao, DCP of Task Force, Hyderabad police.

“We have so far booked about 30-40 cases of ganja in the city this year. Expensive drugs have buyers from areas like Gachibowli and Madhapur as the market is growing there. There has been a continuous crackdown on ganja trade in Hyderabad and all of it is being brought from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha through small-time peddlers. With the lockdown, bulk smuggling has gone down and the drugs have been coming in small quantities since last year,” said the official.

Meanwhile, excise officials said the first quarter of 2021 before the second wave saw a spike in hashish oil cases in the city as well. “The smugglers are transporting hashish oil from Vizag, which is easier to go undetected and multiplies the high. One drop of marijuana oil on a cigarette is enough to cause hours of narcotic effects on a person,” officials shared, adding that they had caught men smuggling the same in honey bottles as they look similar.