KOLKATA: Following the trail of
LSD and
MDMA racket in Kolkata party circles, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Thursday arrested one of the key drug paddlers from
Nashik, Maharashtra.
The agency has also stumbled upon the kingpin of the racket, a person of Indian origin, operating from Dubai.
The NCB officials arrested Kamlesh Baste (20) from a courier agency office at Gaurinandan Arcade in Nashik.
Baste, a resident of Abhiyantanagar is a college dropout. He started doing certificate courses to pursue academic career overseas.
While he was preparing for entrance examinations, he came to know about darkweb.
The lure of quick and easy money gradually dragged him into the drug cartel and Baste became one of the key suppliers of sophisticated drugs across the country.
The case started with the arrest of Rhythm Das, an architect-engineer based out of Kolkata. Rhythm used to book drug through darkweb and sell it through a racket in the city. Two others arrested before Das were found to have deposited money in Rhythm’s bank account towards the payment for consignments.
During the interrogation, Rhythm revealed that he uses two kinds of shipments to procure drugs. While the domestic shipment delivers consignments in 3-4 days, international shipments take more than a week.
Tracking one of his consignments, coming via courier, NCB officials zeroed-in on a courier agency office in Nashik.
A shipment, addressed for Rhythm could not be delivered and it was returned to the Nashik office.
The NCB officials laid a trap and waited for the sender of the consignment to pick it up.
“That is how we managed to arrest Baste. But we were not prepared for what followed after that.
Baste’s phone contacts led us to an international supplier operating from Dubai,” said Dilip Srivastava, zonal director of NCB.
During the interrogation, Baste revealed that rackets operating in India do not get to know the actual suppliers of drugs that are imported in the country.
They have to place orders with another supplier overseas through darkweb. The communications are done through coded languages over mobile applications which can encrypt data traffic.
In the past few years, Baste had ordered hundreds of such consignments to India.
“We are in the process of getting necessary clearances to bring the Dubai-based supplier to India. That will be crucial in busting a larger racket,” Srivastava said.
Moreover, the agency is also looking into the roles of courier agencies that help in shipping the consignments without any checks. The team took Baste to his residence at and seized 0.3 gms of MDMA from his residence. On Friday he was brought to Kolkata on transit remand.
Representative Image
