Officials of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) raided the premises of the factory in Hyderabad's Bolarum area where the recently busted racket of Amphetamine drugs was being manufactured.
The NCB on Monday had conducted raids in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, and uncovered the major drug-ring. Around 231kgs of amphetamine were confiscated, and the street value of the drug consignment ran upto Rs 45 crore.
One of the key members of the drug-ring was Venkat Rama Rao, a research scientist in the chemical industry in Bengaluru.
Another alleged member of the ring, an Indian Air Force Wing Commander with the Information Technology Wing in Delhi, Rajasekhar Reddy, was also arrested.
The Hindu reported:
After stumbling upon some leads during the raids, they seized three bags of chemical substance from his (Rajasekhar's) father-in-law who was a vegetable vendor, sources in local police said. Investigators are yet to ascertain if the factory in Bolarum was the only place used by the kingpin to make the narcotic drug.
The Times of India reported that Reddy grew up in the industrial area of Jeedimetla in Hyderabad and told investigators that he studied at Satyavani Vidyaniketan, where Venkata Rama Rao was his classmate.
The TOI report adds:
The Wing Commander's tryst with narcotics began in 2013 when a childhood friend, K Sreenu, who used to work at a chemical factory near Reddy's house approached him for help...While helping Sreenu, the wing commander met Sreenu's friend A Vishnu, who also had drug trafficking history.
“Vishnu introduced me to Syed Vazarullah Pasha, a narcotics peddler from Vijayanagar Colony , in 2015. Pasha, in turn, had introduced me to several other drug peddlers, including Narender of Hyderabad and Nabil of Mumbai," TOI quotes Reddy as saying in his confession.
Reddy then reportedly met a network of people including a notorious drug peddler from Bengaluru, who is said to have funded the lab in Hyderabad.
A local court on Wednesday remanded Reddy to 14 days in judicial custody.