Police in Chandigarh, Punjab, reported Thursday that they had arrested six people and confiscated Tramadol tablets from their possession after uncovering an illicit opioid supply network.
According to DGP Gaurav Yadav, the Tramadol supply chain was discovered by Amritsar Police. It started with the discovery of 35 tablets in Amritsar and ended at a manufacturing facility in Haridwar, Uttarakhand.
The breakthrough occurred after Ravinder Singh, also known as Nikka, a local hawker in Amritsar, was arrested. In just 15 days, police who were looking into backward and forward links found 74,465 Tramadol tablets, 50 Alprazolam tablets, 325 kg of raw materials needed to make Tramadol, and ₹7.69 lakh in cash.
According to Yadav, six people were arrested, including distributors, chemists, and the plant manager of Lucent Biotech Limited, as a result of successive disclosures and raids. Those who were detained included Hari Kishore, the plant manager of Lucent Biotech in Roorkee; Bikram, the owner and partner of Recall Lifesciences in Roorkee; Manish Kumar Arora; Pooran Jatav; and Kulwinder Singh, also known as Kinda, who owned a medical store in Kathu Nangal, Amritsar district.
“The seized strips bore ‘government supply only not for sale’ tag, raising serious concerns about illegal diversion of medical stock,” claimed the DGP. According to DGP, certain important pharmaceutical companies that were discovered to be in violation of the rules have been sealed, and their records are being examined.
A combined team of Amritsar Police and drug inspectors raided certain pharmaceutical facilities in Roorkee, confiscating 3,25 kg of unregistered raw material and 4,130 unlabelled Tramadol tablets, Amritsar Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar added. He added that over 70,000 pills and ₹7.69 lakh in cash had previously been recovered.
“During interrogation, Hari Kishore acknowledged printing ‘government supply only not for sale’ tags on the ‘TRAKEM-100’ Tramadol tablet strips at the manufacturing facility,” Bhullar added.
According to Bhullar, the defendant also acknowledged that Tramadol pills produced for a different law firm were unlawfully sold to Recall Lifesciences. Raids are being carried out to apprehend the additional individuals implicated in the scheme.