Banned cough syrup consignment seized, two held in Siliguri

A cough syrup brand which was long banned from the market was seized by the Siliguri police on Thursday night.

Around 2,000 bottles were seized from two persons who were trying to smuggle the whole consignment to Bangladesh and North-East India.

The accused initially tried their best to sneak one part of the consignment to Bangladesh and another part to Agartala.

However, their efforts went in vain when the entire consignment was captured by the Siliguri police.

Nagendra Roy and Arun Singh, two Siliguri residents were arrested from Pradhannagar.

“The accused Nagendra Roy and Arun Singh were arrested. They were produced before the court and remanded to police custody. We have seized 2,000 bottles, each of which contains 200 ml of syrup,” said Sunil Yadav, DC (DD).

The further investigation also revealed that the consignment was sent from Kolkata to Siliguri by train.

“We have conveyed the matter to the Rail authority. The smugglers generally send these consignments as parcels. The rail staff bypasses those parcels to vans. The vans carry those parcels outside the station,” an investigating officer said.

It should be recalled that the Narcotics Control Bureau on Tuesday seized 6,600 bottles of phensedyl cough syrup from the Kolkata’s Jorabagan area.

Two persons were arrested in this connection. The seizure in Siliguri is the next big capture after the Jorabagan incident.

In Jorabagan, The consignment was seized when the bottles, packed in large crates, were being brought down from a lorry and taken inside a godown at Madan Mohan Dutta Lane in Jorabagan.

The owner of the godown Seema Dey and Agartala resident Nandan Paul, who had shipped the bottles, were arrested.

According to sources, the consignment was being sent to Bangladesh via the Tripura-Bangladesh border. According to Dilip Srivastava, zonal director (East) of NCB, more than 8,800 bottles of contraband cough syrup has been seized in the last month in three raids.

NCB also seized 3,400 tablets of a hypnotic drug Nitrazepam and 1,400 tablets of metaphetamines in the last month.

Within two months of the Delhi High Court’s interim injunction on banning cough syrup Phensedyl, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has seized a total of 1.04 lakh bottles of the prescription medicine 

which is often used as a drug in Bangladesh.

While there was a temporary climb down on smuggling the medicine to the neighbouring country 

after central government put a ban on it, movements of the medicine across the border have seen a surge once again after the court injunction.