New Delhi: Delhi is not only a transit point in drug smuggling, but also a big consumer of party drugs. The recent death of NRI Anmol Sarna was one case which once again highlighted the easy availability of drugs in Delhi NCR, police said.
According to police, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, major constituents of cough syrups and tablets, are illegally used in manufacturing of high-quality party drugs such as Methamphetamine (commonly known as Ice, Ecstasy, etc.) and smuggled from India to international markets.
"They are smuggled from pharmaceutical factories in Dehradun (Uttarakhand), Baddi and Solan (Himachal Pradesh) to Myanmar via Delhi and northeastern states like Manipur and Mizoram, said DCP (Crime-South), Bhisham Singh.
As pseudoephedrine and ephedrine are legal for manufacture for use in medicines and can be bought on prescription, they are brought to Delhi in form of tablets by drug traffickers in the name of fake pharmaceutical companies, he said.
From Delhi, they are sent to Manipur or Mizoram. There, they are powdered and reprocessed to extract the main constituents, he added.
Then, it sent to Myanmar, from where it is moved to China and other south-east Asian countries for preparing party drugs which are sold in international markets as well as in Delhi and other parts of the country.
In Anmol`s case too, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), which was consumed by him and his four friends, were procured from China. Police, however, said LSD was not very common in Delhi`s party circles. The last time that Delhi police had seized any LSD was in May 2008.
Police said cocaine was the main party drug in Delhi and it was chiefly Nigerians who were involved in their smuggling.
According to police, besides drug syndicates, terrorists groups, too, were involved in drug trafficking as a funding avenue.
Sarna died on the intervening night of September 13 and 14 under mysterious circumstances while at a party at a friend`s house at South Park Apartments in the Kalkaji area. Police are investigating the case.
PTI
