Pseudoephedrine smuggler nabbed by Rachakonda police a frequent flier to Malaysia

HYDERABAD: Pune-based Shaikh Fareed Mohammad Ali who was arrested by Rachakonda police on Tuesday for trying to ship Pseudoephedrine to Australia and New Zealand, through international courier services, was initially into the business of selling foreign electronic goods in Chennai and Pune.

But he shifted to smuggling Pseudoephedrine due to high returns. Fareed’s father and grandfather belonged to Myanmar and had migrated to India and settled in Pune, decades ago.

A college drop out, Fareed started an electronics business through his brother-in-law. Inquiries revealed that he would travel to Malaysia at least once in three days to get electronic goods consignments. He would leave Chennai at noon, purchase goods in Malaysia and return to Chennai the next morning. His passport seized by police showed multiple visits to Malaysia in the recent past.

“His travel was like that of any billionaire businessman, who would fly abroad for business purposes, spend a few hours and return home. He Fareed would land with the foreign goods in the morning hours and in a few hours, he would have sold them all.” said investigators.

Though this business was running successfully, as the profits were extremely lucrative in drug smuggling, he slowly shifted interest into this. Though there were risks involved in smuggling drugs, Fareed and his associates switched to it and made good money, it was found. Police had already found that he, along with his associates, had shipped around 70 Kgs of Pseudoephedrine during the year 2022, which is valued around Rs 50 Crores. Police are in the process of nabbing the kingpin who was supplying drugs to this gang.