Busting drug cartels

Swooping down on drug smugglers, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Tuesday busted a pan-India cartel operating on the darknet. The NCB’s strategic and operational planning led to a massive seizure of 15,000 blots of LSD — a synthetic chemical-based drug categorised as a hallucinogen and popularly called Ecstasy — and the arrest of six accused, all in their 20s, from various cities in the country. The success of this operation is significant as it demonstrates that the law enforcement authorities are rising to the challenge of the increasingly high-tech fight against the illegal drug trade.

It has been known for nearly a decade now that to evade the cops, drug traffickers are resorting to trading on marketplaces on the darknet — an Internet platform that uses secret alleys on The Onion Router (ToR), provides anonymity to the traffickers and their customers and is, thus, difficult to detect and penetrate. Their modus operandi involves clandestinely luring customers on social media, dealing in cryptocurrency and using courier services for delivery. According to the 2020 report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, major drug markets on the dark web are worth around $315 million annually.

And, like in the present case where the LSD was sourced from Poland and the Netherlands and supplied across India, the drug syndicates have international alliances. Significantly, they are adept at outsmarting the authorities by being a step ahead in adopting latest tech tools to remain untraceable. As sharing of knowledge and resources by various agencies concerned is the key to unearthing such rackets, the Central government has set up the Narcotics Coordination mechanism for uniting state-level and national efforts. India has also signed pacts or MoUs with various countries to enable the NCB to work in tandem with them for combating the drug menace.

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