NCB busts online pharma racket to send narcotics to US

The Narcotics Control Bureau on Sunday said it has arrested a Hyderabad-based man and seized Rs 3.71 crore cash as it claimed to have unearthed an illegal Internet pharmacy that shipped narcotics to the US and some other countries.

The pharmacy, identified by the federal anti-narcotics agency as JR Infinity Pvt Ltd, was located at Domalguda in Telangana's capital city.

Officials of the NCB Hyderabad sub-zone carried out raids at this location few days back and arrested the unidentified 'kingpin' who allegedly ran the illegal pharmacy.

It said Rs 3.71 crore cash, identified as proceeds of drugs trafficking, a number of laptops, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets that were used to operate the "illegal Internet pharmacy" have been seized.

"Employees of JR Infinity used to contact customers in the US and other countries over email and VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) calls and offer various pharma drugs, including those covered under the NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act, for recreational use to them."

"Once customers agreed upon the product and price, the employees collected the details of the customers like name, shipping address, email id etc, and shared payment links with them," NCB deputy director general (operations) Sanjay Kumar Singh said in a statement.

The officer said customers were offered multiple payment methods "like account transfer, credit card, PayPal, bitcoins etc."

On confirmation of the payment by the customer, JR infinity used to illicitly divert and dispatch pharma drugs to the customers in the US and other countries, he said.

The agency found that the arrested accused had "carried out more than one thousand illicit diversions and shipments of drugs from India to the US and within US also."

The psychotropic tablets that were trafficked included Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Alprazolam, Diazepam, Lorazepam, Clonazepam, Zolpidem, Tramadol etc.