DRUG & SLEAZE BIZ BEATS CURBS TO BOOM AGAIN

Delhi cops launch crackdown as syndicates peddle narcotics via emergency vehicles & sex rackets move to ‘online services’

- Chayyanika Nigam

EARLY this month, five parcels of banned drugs were seized from a Delhi-based management graduate by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). He had received them from the US despite the lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus spread.

The accused, in construction material business, had been receiving contraband using the identities of his tenants and other people, officials said.

“He had a contact in Russia who arranged parcels from the US to be sent to him in India,” said Rajesh Nandan Srivastava, Deputy Director-General, NCB.

Drug syndicates are also misusing essential service vehicles to beat the lockdown, Mail Today has learnt.

This is happening after pubs, bars, discos and other party hotspots shut and cross-border consignments dried up, sinking Delhi’s ever-flourishing business of drugs worth hundreds of crores of rupees.

Similarly, with no vaccine in sight and strict social distancing being followed, flesh trade has been hit hard too, with many escort agencies shutting shop as girls have refused to work.

But sex rackets have also “reinvented” and moved to “online services” to beat the lockdown and cater to select customers at a premium.

THE NARCO BIZ

Delhi has been infamous for consumption and being a transit hub of the narcotics trade. Every month, drugs worth Rs 100 crore are consumed in the National Capital. Consignments worth several thousand crores of rupees are also trafficked from here.