HYDERABAD: A tattoo may be be a fad or a fashion statement for many youngsters. But for some drug users, it's a tool of communication — between an abuser and a drug supplier. Certain tattoos immediately signal to peddlers that they have found a reliable customer looking for his regular fix.
Telangana police officials stumbled across this unique signalling strategy after they started questioning a couple of peddlers who were also addicted to the wares they sold. Both had elaborate tattoos on their bodies.
They confirmed that the body art was used to identify members of the drug users' community.
When drug abusers from Hyderabad go to Goa to buy hard drugs, the supplier will not risk randomly approaching them. "Based on known tattoo designs or hairstyle or their clothes that are acceptable in circles of drug trade, sellers will identify and approach, strangers with tattoos being the most common way to link up," sources in Telangana police told TOI.
The accepted tattoos include skull and bones encircled by a snake eating its own tail, certain gods, men trekking among the Himalayas, religious structures and snakes.
Police officials said the scary part is that college-goers and unemployed youngsters, after becoming addicts, are turning peddlers. As they do not have the money and at the same time are in a state of desperation to consume drugs, they risk becoming peddlers in Hyderabad.
"By buying dope at a lesser price mainly from Goa or other places, the abuser will return to Hyderabad and sell some portion of the consignment to known persons at a higher price. As a result, whatever stock that is left for his self-consumption, invariably he gets it for free," a police official said.
Apart from occasionally partying in a group in Goa and abusing drugs, city-based drug users send one member of their group to Goa where they will buy dope and return to Telangana so that they can clandestinely share it among themselves. Most of the communication among these group members takes place on chatting apps, police added.
