New Delhi: Widening its probe into the busting and arrest of the country's first darknet-based narcotics operator, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Wednesday said that it has nabbed three more persons including pharma company director were arrested from Nagpur and seized psychotropic drugs and tablets worth Rs 4 crore.
The NCB identified the accused as S Makade (33), he was Director of the company involved in pharmaceutical trading, T Patel (28) and BK Chauhan (33), an MBA. NCB on February 2 had arrested India's first ''darknet'' narcotics operative from Lucknow, Dipu Singh. The fresh arrests were made after Singh's interrogation about his alleged illegal activities and contacts, NCB's Delhi zone director K P S Malhotra said.
Deputy Director-General Rajesh Nandan Srivastava said that during the investigation, Singh revealed that the majority of consignments destined to USA and UK were shipped through his contacts in India. "Forensic examination superimposed with the interrogation led to the identification of T. Patel and later trio were nabbed, " Srivastava said.
According to NCB official, Patel revealed that he works in the company of Makade and Chauhan. The company was primarily dealing with ED medicines. In April 2018, Tramadol was declared a controlled psychotropic substance under NDPS Act and they were receiving regular orders of Tramadol from UK and USA.
Makade had his connects in Singapore and had one company registered at Singapore which was functional till last year. Exploring the contacts of Singapore, they arranged for the deliveries of psychotropic substances from Singapore to UK and USA.
Singh, earlier arrested in this case, used to place orders destined for USA and UK to Patel through Whatsapp. Patel, working in the company of Makade and Chauhan, would pass the order to the Singapore contact.
The payment of the orders placed by Singh were used to be received by Patel through bank accounts. "After the delivery of the orders, Makade's company used to transfer the money to the Singapore contact through Bitcoins, wire transfer and bank account transfer.
The financial trail investigation of the case is underway, NCB officials said, adding that 135 Kgs of psychotropic drugs and 1 lakh tablets of psychotropic drugs seized in the operation.