Telangana fails to track drug kingpin
Investigation wing focused more on victims.
Hyderabad: From 2012 to the end of 2016, the city police and other wings seized 248 dots/blots of LSD, 780 grams of cocaine, 625 grams of brown sugar, and hundreds of kilograms of marijuana.
Despite this, the investigative authorities have not managed to break the chain of suppliers by nabbing the kingpins. In most of the cases, the investigation wings focused on victims than kingpins.
Major drug rackets were busted by the city police after 2011, including the incident in which a Nigerian named Clement along with two screen celebrities were caught by police at Banjara Hills. The city police formed special teams to nab celebrities who were involved in the drug racket.
An official who was a part of the investigation said that the department had prepared a list of 100 drug addicts from the cine industry. “There were no proper inputs from the arrested persons but the teams identified clubs and pubs which became hubs for drugs,” the official said.
Senior officials who were with the city police during the investigations were not willing to respond except to say that in one or two cases the investigations did not zero in on the prime accused who were organising drug rackets from Goa and Mumbai.
“In one case it was found that the source of drugs was South Africa and in another case an unidentified person was supplying drugs to the city. It is a sensitive case and the majority of addicts become suppliers later,” the official said.
In another case, the police arrested Michael, a Nigerian national, for supplying cocaine and heroin to foreign tourists at the Qutb Shahi tombs and Golconda fort. He was nabbed by Task Force police in January and the operations team handed the two over to local police for further investigation.
Except the seizure of 13 grams of cocaine and 6 grams of heroin, the police did not take up in-depth investigation into the source of the drugs and the kingpins.
An intermediate student from Bowenpally went to Goa last year on an excursion and was introduced to brown sugar. He got addicted and became friendly with one ‘Andrus’ from Mumbai who became a source for LSD and brown sugar. He became an agent for Andrus but the investigation did not go beyond Andrus.
Another student who got addicted to marijuana during his SSC last year got addicted to cocaine and brown sugar along with four other friends. He too became an agent. There are no developments in this case either, except for sending the arrested person to jail.
Film star Abhishek was arrested along with 370 grams of cocaine and brown sugar last year but the police investigation was limited to those who supplied the drug to him.
Except finding sources of various drugs like cocaine and brown sugar from South Africa, LSD from Goa, MDMA from Mangalore etc. drugs like ephedrine, metamorphine, amphetamine were manufactured in the city outskirts to export it to other countries and other states.
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the Narcotics Control Bureau had earlier seized drugs worth Rs 78 crore in the last two years. Based on the statements released by the anti-narcotics wing of the Mumbai police after seizing 9 kg of brown sugar and one kg of cocaine last year from Goa dealers, city and state police have come to the conclusion that Goa dealers were procuring drugs from the US, France and Germany.