Expired licences of retail dealers, anonymous chemists and pilferage of opioids are among the reasons for the unstoppable supply of opioids into Punjab from other states, police said Thursday. Fatehgarh Sahib police which recently busted an opioid module, found that the tablets they recovered were supplied to retailers by manufacturers whose licenses have been expired. Fatehgarh Sahib police, on January 31, recovered 5.31 lakh pharma opioids and arrested four people identified as Sunny Kumar and Ranjit Singh alias Rinku, both from Ludhiana and Eshaan Gupta and Ravi Kumar, brought on a production warrant from the Ludhiana Central Jail. The police had registered a case under sections 22C (where the contravention involves commercial quantity) and 29 (abetment and criminal conspiracy) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) at the Gobindgarh police station, Fatehgarh Sahib. The officers investigating the case told The Indian Express that they identified a man, Manjeet Singh, who was running a chemist shop in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur despite his licence being expired. “The manufacturers continued to supply the pharma opioids to this man (Manjeet). He stacked and then smuggled those into Punjab through courier. Another man, Ranjeet Goswami, was arrested by our team from Sonipat in Haryana. He was also operating without a licence and smuggling the opioids into Punjab,” an officer, who has been part of the investigation said. Police have recovered 6.71 lakh pharma opioids from Manjeet and around 2 lakh from Goswami in a previous case registered by Fatehgarh Sahib police. In the past three months alone, the district police have recovered around 17 lakh pharma opioids and registered three cases, the most recent one being registered on January 31. Explaining the modus operandi, Fatehgarh Sahib Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ravjot Grewal said that during the investigation, they noticed there were many bogus retailers who used to buy the opioids from the manufacturers who are involved in the pilferage. “Pilferage is a challenge for us but we are going deeper to find the big fish,” the SSP said. She added that on the arrested Ranjit Rinku’s disclosures, the police recovered 3.60 lakh tablets of lomotil and 1.51 lakh tablets of tramadol from different locations in Ludhiana. The police have so far traced the links of the smugglers to Saharanpur in UP and Sonipat in Haryana. An officer privy to the investigation said that they are also investigating the role of the manufacturers as it is their duty to check whether the retailers buying the opioids have valid licence.
