Youth held with 15 LSD stamps, 70 Nitravet tabs

Thiruvananthapuram: In a major catch, Kazhakkoottam range excise officials seized 15 LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) stamps and 70 Nitravet tablets from a 23-year-old man on Friday.
Antony Rajan, a resident of Ernakulam North, brought the restricted drugs to the city to sell them among substance abusers in the cyber city area . He was arrested and remanded in judicial custody. A case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act has been filed against him.
LSD, also called Acid, is a popular hallucinogenic drug. Nitravet is a hypnotic drug used to treat anxiety disorder and insomnia. Both the drugs are capable of inducing hypnotic effect for long hours and are in great demand among drug abusers.
Antony is a small-time actor, who was shooting for a movie starring Tovino Thomas.
Excise officials said that Antony had brought the drugs to distribute at the weekend parties of youths employed at Technopark. He was caught outside an apartment near Technopark Phase III campus.
‘’We had intensified our vigil after learning about the drug abuse in weekend parties,” said assistant excise inspector Mukesh Kumar, who was part of the excise team. He said that two kinds of parties are happening in the cyber city region – DJ parties organized in hotels and small parties in apartments. Excise officials had been monitoring the activities outside s hotels and apartments. That is when Antony came on their radar during the early hours of Friday.
“Our plan was to nab both the seller and the buyers. But after tailing the accused for some time there came a moment when we felt like he would give us the slip if we kept waiting. Hence, we decided to nab him so that we could at least seize the drugs’’ the officer said.
Following the arrest, the accused told the officials that he procured the drugs from Goa. The LSD was purchased for Rs 1,000 per stamp, and he used to sell it for Rs 2,500 to retailers. The Nitravet tablets cost Rs 90 per strip, but he sold it for Rs 1,000. Antony had scratched off the batch number on the tablet strips so that the investigators would not trace the pharmacist, who sold them to him.
The excise team was led by Kazhakkoottam excise inspector Pratheep Rao.