Diazepam dealers nabbed by police

The police arrested two Nigerian nationals last month and seized about 1.5 lakh diazepam ampules from their hotel room in south Mumbai. The accused were identified as Camillus John Uvah (34) and Jude Joseh (24).

They informed the police they were acting at the behest of two of their associates, Bashir and Kent. Senior Inspector Patel at the narcotics cell told Express Newsline the search is on for the other two. The accused had no documents on them and would smuggle the drugs out of India as normal baggage, taking advantage of uninformed customs officials.

Patel further informed the Nigerians had procured the consignment from one Khurshid Anwar (35), an agent of two pharmaceutical firms, Manpro at Palghar and Indus Pharma at Delhi, that manufacture these injections.

Khurshid and one of his brothers had approached one Liladhar Birud, a chemist-cum-co-ordinator and exporter, for obtaining the drugs, who in turn approached Manoj Gosaria, the owner of one of the manufacturing firms.

While Bashir and Kent, both Nigerian nationals, have escaped the police dragnet, Khurshid has been arrested and remanded to police custody.

The arrests of the Nigerian nationals were made on April 23, while Khurshid’s arrest was made on May 10.

So far the rather slow investigation has led the police to identify a chain of brokers and manufacturers involved in the procuring of the drug. Surprisingly, though, none of these parties have either been searched, nor has any action been initiated against them.

The police suspect fake companies were also created as part of the operations. The fact that Nigerian nationals were involved did not surprise the police, because the former are known to smuggle out huge quantities of scheduled drugs like analgin injections to their home country.

Since the police seized Diazepam for the first time, they sought the help of the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) for further investigations. The police had sent samples of the seized drugs to a laboratory for confirmation of the ampules’ chemical contents. However, they say they are yet to receive a report. Meanwhile, according to unconfirmed information, the ampules were mixed with other narcotic drugs.