Solan: Noose tightening around peddlers, youth turning to sedative capsules

Solan, February 13

With the Solan police tightening its noose on drug peddlers, the youth are now turning to sedative capsules. Given the curbs on the availability of drugs like heroin in the district, the demand for sedative capsules has increased.

The Solan police recently nabbed three youths with a large amount of sedative tablets of Tapdro and Tapentadol from their residence in Chambaghat. They were identified as Gaurav (19), who hails from Delhi; Salman Chawdhary (27) from Delhi; and Mohammed Ikram (22) from Bihar.

As many as 990 tablets costing Rs 50,600 were seized from their possession. “The seized tablets were manufactured at Nalagarh and the officials of the Drugs Control Administration have been handed over the case for further action,” said Solan SP Gaurav Singh.

Finding a potential market in Solan, owing to the various educational institutes, several such seizures have come to fore in the past few weeks.

SP Gaurav said that since a large number of suppliers from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi have been arrested by the Solan and Shimla police, it has broken the backbone of the drug peddlers of the area. “Since the supply has shrunk, the price has gone up from Rs 1,500 per gram to nearly Rs 8,000 per gram, making its consumption costlier. The drug peddlers were now trading in sedative tablets, whose legal implications were much less and were considerably easier to smuggle,” added Singh.