HYDERABAD: Police on Tuesday busted a drug racket dealing in banned narcotics like Ecstasy and LSD. But what is disturbing is the targeted customer group - engineering students, IT professionals, children of the rich with money to spare and the film fraternity.City police, in an operation code named ‘Marcus’, on Tuesday busted a racket whose Mangalore-based kingpin sourced the narcotics from Netherlands and supplied by peddlers in the city. Cops suspect that the consignment caught - 367 Ecstasy pills, 62 blots of LSD and 50 grams of Amphetamine worth `8 lakhs - was brought to the city for parties during the Diwali season. “Nearly 40-50 names (of customers) have cropped up during the probe. The name of a DJ of a pub also figured in the customer base,” city police commissioner AK Khan told reporters. The kingpin of the racket, Anthony alias John, a resident of Mangalore, gets the banned narcotics from a person identified as Frank of Netherlands, police said. “The order is placed through phone, email and other social networking websites,” Khan added.Frank sends the narcotics via courier by concealing the pills and blotter papers (of LSD) between medicines. In Hyderabad, the substance was collected by Anthony’s associate Deeraj Nayak. According to Khan, Anthony bought one pill of Ecstasy or a blotter of LSD for `400-`500 but sold it to customers for `4,000-`5,000. Incidentally, both the nabbed persons are well-educated. The consignment caught by the cops was, unlike the usual way, sent to Mangalore. Police laid a trap and seized the narcotics while it was brought to the city in a private travels bus. “The driver of the bus, Dharmaraj Deshmukh, who was carrying the parcel was also arrested,” Khan said. Cops also recovered two laptops, having the contact numbers of the customers, and mobile phones from the accused. Police suspect the racket was running since last September and drugs worth `3 crore have been smuggled into the city.
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