Hyderabad: In the middle of 2015, Calvin Mascrenhas had pulled off a feat that no other drug peddler in south India had ever done. Calvin was one of the few Indian customers of ‘Silk Road’ the notorious e-market in darknet. He worked his way into the international drug market that hides secretly in the Inter-net’s shady corners and became a regular buyer of large quantities of LSD that was directly delivered to Goa, Hyderabad. Guised as medicines, the drugs were sent through private courier services or sometimes via Indian postal service. Drugs arrived at his doorstep and from there Calvin sold it through his network of smaller peddlers and his own direct customers.
Excise officials, who questioned Calvin, said he started using Silk Road after it became known to the rest of the world due to an FBI crackdown in the US. Calvin was first arrested in 2013 for possessing and selling ganja.
“After he came out of jail in 2015, he started using Silk Road and other similar websites to buy drugs in bulk. It was an easy way to procure large quantities of drugs for him. The packets would arrive at his doorstep, and he could sell it off for a much higher price in his circle”, said a probe official from the Excise department.
The seller is anonymous in Silk Road. Nobody knows where the drug is being ship-ped from. When excise officials grilled Calvin, he confessed that even he was not fully aware of the origin of the drugs. He told officers that his guess was, that it was from the US. But, the officials could not confirm the details because it is almost impossible to trace the seller in darknet.
As per Calvin, his initial sources were from Goa. But when he later shifted to Hyderabad to work in a tech company, he started using Silk Road to buy drugs. “That is when his customer base increased. With the help of his friend, he was able to sell to as many people as possible in a short time”, an official said.
