The Hindu : New Delhi News : Massive seizure of marco tablets in Delhi

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 22, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Massive seizure of marco tablets in Delhi

Staff Reporter

Prime accused, a doctor; five others arrested in India

NEW DELHI: An international racket in illegal sale of narcotics and psychotropic tablets through Internet websites allegedly being run by Indian nationals has been smashed in the first such major operation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the United States government.

As part of the exercise, the Delhi zonal unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) arrested the main accused and five of his accomplices and seized over 40 lakh tablets from the Capital, Agra in Uttar Pradesh and Jaipur in Rajasthan in the past two days.

A yearlong probe by the DEA had earlier revealed that narcotics and psychotropic tablets (pharmaceutical controlled substance) in huge bulk were being illegally exported from India to the United States through over 60 websites. During the operation, the DEA zeroed in on Akhil Bansal, a doctor pursuing higher education in Philadelphia, and found that he was allegedly redirecting the mails pertaining to orders for scheduled drugs to a man in Agra, later identified as Brij Bhushan Bansal, who turned out to be his father and also the prime source of the controlled pharmaceutical drugs being exported through the websites. Brij Bhushan Aggarwal also is a doctor.

While the other members of the gang were identified in the subsequent probe, the DEA learnt that the payments for the consignments were being redirected by a person based in Australia, Stakelton, who accepted the payments from clients only through international credit cards.

In the operation launched on April 19, the DEA got Akhil arrested and froze his and his accomplices' accounts and attached property worth about 5.6 million dollars.

At his instance, two U.S. nationals, Elizabeth Armstrong and David Armstrong, who allegedly worked as distributors for Akhil, were also arrested. It is learnt that some more arrests were made from other parts of the United States.

In a parallel operation, the NCB, which had been keeping a close watch on the movements of the suspects for the past six months, mounted a raid in Agra and arrested Akhil's father and froze his bank accounts and attached property worth 2 million dollars. His accomplice, Anil, was also arrested from there. The NCB seized thousands of tablets from them.

Another team comprising the NCB and the DEA officials mounted a raid at Jaipur and arrested Shivani Aggarwal, who operated under the code names Julie/Jaya, her husband, Yakin Aggarwal and his father, Kishan Aggarwal. During interrogation, they allegedly disclosed that they used to despatch consignments of narcotic tablets to Dr. Bansal in Agra and also to countries at his instance. Thousands of tablets were recovered from them.

Meanwhile, the NCB also mounted a raid at one Renaissance Courier located at Sant Nagar, East of Kailash, in South Delhi and arrested a person, Praveen Dua, who used to despatch the consignments to Dr. Bansal's clients outside the country. The NCB said over 33 lakh narcotic and psychotropic tablets were seized from the courier office.

While efforts are on to arrest other members of the gang, it is learnt that the DEA, through the local drug enforcement agencies, is mounting raids in countries like Australia, Canada and Costa Rica, from where some more accused have been arrested. In the entire operation, 20 people have been arrested so far.

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