Drug bust: Hyderabad pharma company honcho held, ketamine worth Rs 25 crore seized

HYDERABAD: A top executive of a pharmaceutical company was arrested on Monday for allegedly manufacturing ketamine — also dubbed ‘date rape drug’ — at one of their units at Nacharam industrial area. Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) sleuths seized 477 kilos of ketamine worth Rs 25 crore from Inchem Laboratories Pvt Ltd’s Nacharam unit.
The NCB had on May 2 raided the firm’s Nacharam unit, seized the drugs and summoned Inchem director P Venkateshwarulu. On Monday, Venkateshwarulu was arrested and produced in a local court. The Inchem director had earlier been arrested in 2009 by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) over seizure of 403 kilos of ephedrine, which is used to produce amphetamines. He has now been taken to Bengaluru on a prisoner transit (PT) warrant as the racket in Hyderabad was busted following NCB raids in the Karnataka capital.
“The Nacharam factory has licence for research and development of pharmaceutical drugs. But they were illegally manufacturing ketamine,” an NCB official said.
The pharma firm has its registered office at Czech Colony, Sanatnagar. When NCB sleuths raided the factory at Nacharam, there were 17 workers. Of the 17, eight were regular employees and the rest were on contract. The NCB investigators did not arrest any workers as they were unaware of what drugs were being manufactured at the facility.