Hyderabad: Teens take to drug selling

Hyderabad: After the arrest of a 17-year-old-boy, an Inter-mediate student, who ran an Ecstasy racket with three other youths, police say that Hyderabad’s psychedelic drug market is full of students like him. 

 Their rapport with Goan drug circles has led to them  becoming peddlers who sell the best LSD and Ecstasy in the market. Many students visit Goa at least three times  a month to procure Ecstasy and other psychedelic drugs and smuggle them to Hyderabad.

In the city, they sell them for much higher prices and lead a lavish life with that money.The youngster, a resident of Tarnaka, was the local peddler, who would take drugs from a smuggler and distribute them among his peers for a higher price. 

“The boy is studying in second year Intermediate. He buys drugs from a person named Hannan, who probably smuggled them  from Goa to our city. The boy sells the drugs among students. He might have been earning up to Rs 1,000 for each gram through these sales,” said S. Mohan Kumar, Inspector of East Zone Task Force.

Police officials were stunned to find that the 17-year-old  had been peddling drugs for the last six months, and had  run the racket with three other youths, two of them students, successfully.

People like Hannan, who smuggled the drug to Hyderabad from Goa for local peddlers, have learned how to evade the police. “The main place they visit in Goa is Anjuna beach, where they have good sources, both foreigners and locals. They smuggle LSD to Hyderabad in liquid form in small bottles, which look like eye drops. They make the LSD blots here in the city using small papers or stamps. One or two drops of LSD can make a single blot worth more than Rs 1,700. Similarly, Ecstasy is also concealed  in books or other articles before smuggling it  to Hyderabad,” said another senior official from the Task Force.

Besides LSD and Ecstasy, these peddlers sell Charas, which is usually smuggled from Kasol in Himachal Pradesh. According to the investigation officials, the majority of the customers of LSD and Ecstasy in the city are students, and some IT professionals. 

“Since this is a party drug, they usually use it at private parties held at homes or in farmhouses in the suburbs,” said an official.