Online pharmacy racket: probe to examine links abroad

Two other involved,Hyderabad-based Imran Khan and Venkatesh Rao,were arrested earlier for their role in the racket. The entire operation took five months.

While Khan’s role was to ensure that the drugs ordered online reached the clients,calls were being handled by eight employees at his call centre Limra IT Solutions. Rao,a software diploma holder,allegedly ensured that he brought his share of clients via e-mail. The probe has now shifted to Hyderabad as the racket mostly operated from there.

Yashodan Wanage,NCB zonal head for the western region,said,“The inbox of Rao has shown close to 5,000 pending orders on psychotic substances and oxycodone and hydrocodone drugs at the time of arrest.”

The mails showed that the online portal had clients in Australia,Europe,Malaysia and USA. “But what interested us is the manner in which the business operated. There were unified hubs for each region and country. So for all the clients from America phone calls and e-mail orders were consolidated at a single point. In case of USA it was a hub in New York,” said Wanage. The advantage of such a channel is that “there is very limited area for leaks”.

The entire logistics was allegedly catering to a foreign cartel as it took the NCB atleast five months to intrude and make contact with the portal moderators and suppliers. “They were clear that they would not take any Indian orders as they did not want trouble,” said Wanage.

The inbox showed that the clients were made to believe that the portal was a foreign one,while all the drugs were being sent from India via couriers through consolidated hubs where the source destination’s identity is concealed. “The couriers were being wrongly declared at the exit airports,” he added.