The Anti-Narcotics Wing of the CCB on Tuesday unearthed an inter-State drug racket and arrested five persons. The police seized ₹2 crore worth of synthetic drugs which the accused had stored in rooms of their paying guest accommodation. They supplied the drugs through delivery apps.
Based on a tip-off, a team of officials led by Inspector B.S. Ashok arrested Vishal Kumar, Sagar Mehta, Bimashu Thakur, Mahabali Singh, and Sukhjith Singh. Investigations have revealed they were peddling narcotics since September 2021.
The police seized MDMA, LSD, cocaine, hashish, charas, ecstasy, and high quality marijuana from the PG accommodation in Marathahalli and Whitefield.
The accused are unemployed graduates from Delhi and Bihar who were recruited through Locanto by their handler who is operating from Delhi. The main accused had placed the ad on Locanto with a tittle “If you want earn respect with money and also willing to do anything for it, contact me” to get local peddlers for Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai where his operations were active.
The accused offered them food and accommodation with a salary of ₹50,000 per month for packing the drugs neatly in a gift wrapper and also under the pretext of medicine, with ‘handle with care’ stickers. The prime accused who is yet to be arrested is sourcing the drugs from darknet and paying for it through crypto currency. The consignment he is getting used to be parcelled through courier agencies or India Post to the PGs, which he had taken on rent.
The racket is so systematic that there was no direct contact between the five arrested and the customers. The customers would contact the peddlers through Telegram, Instagram, Briar, Confdide and session apps and deliver the drugs through delivery apps after payment is made through google or Gpay.
The Narcotics Wing while probing a drug case stumbled upon the information from an addict.
The police are now on the lookout for the prime accused. Efforts are on to track him down while all the five accused have been booked under NDPS Act.
