THE Patiala district police in the Indian state of Punjab claim to have busted an international synthetic drug ring involving hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few years with the arrest of Devinder Singh aka Dev, a Canadian from Ontario. Police said Dev had been living in Canada since 1972 and had been a frequent visitor to India before his arrest.
Sources here claim Dev, who is in his early 50s, used to live in B.C. and ran a business in groceries.
Punjab Police claimed that Dev, who was originally from a village in Sri Ganganagar district, was the mastermind of Rajasthan-based international synthetic drug racket.” He had been in the drug trade since 2004 and even supplied opium to accused drug smuggler Jagdish Singh Bhola.
Hardial Singh Mann, Senior Superintendent of Police, Patiala, said Dev was arrested from Sri Ganganagar on January 5. He was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Patiala, on Tuesday and was remanded to custody until January 14, according to the Tribune newspaper of Punjab.
The newspaper said that precursor chemicals ketamine, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were procured by peddlers from Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi and smuggled into Canada. The processing of these chemicals to manufacture synthetic drugs was done mainly in Canada.
“Precursor chemicals ketamine, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were procured by drug racketeers from Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi among others after diverting them from medicinal sectors and smuggled to Canada. The processing of the precursor chemicals to manufacture synthetic drugs was done mainly in Canada by Chinese and Vietnamese nationals,” Mann said.
He added that the primary conduits for smuggling the contraband consignments into India were Pramod Tony, a Karol Bagh- based operative and another person who owned a ship, which was used to smuggle chemicals out of country, according to Indian media reports.