CHENNAI: A youngster working with a private television channel was arrested on Friday by the Narcotics Intelligence Bureau CID for allegedly selling banned psychotropic substances to school and college students. N Karthik Anand (27) is from Pollachi. He works with a TV channel in Chennai, translating Hindi serials into Tamil.
Sleuths have seized 30 LSD stamps weighing 830 mg and 45 MDMA tablets weighing 13.190 grams from him, total worth of which is around Rs 3 lakh. Officials say they zeroed in on him after receiving information that many school and college students were visiting his house at Vedagiri Street in Alandur.
“We started watching the house. Then, one of our men went to the house posing as a customer. We arrested the culprit on Friday morning,” an official told Express. Karthik is a BA visual communication graduate from a private college in Coimbatore.
Started as addict, progressed to peddler
“He himself was an addict. As he could not afford the cost of drugs, he started selling them to students for extra money. He had built a customer base,” officials said.
Made 5 Times more cash as drug dealer
Speaking about the youngster caught selling drugs to students, DSP of NIB CID D Purushothaman said Karthik himself was an addict. “He was not making enough money through his job to buy his own drugs. So, he started a trade by the side, selling drugs to students. He attracted customers through his connections. He got the drugs from a foreigner in Goa,” Purushothaman said.
The foreigner, as per preliminary probe, brings drugs to Goa once a month from European countries.
Many others like Karthik used to buy in bulk from the foreigner who has not yet been identified.
The drugs include LSD (psychedelic drug - Lysergic Acid Diethylamide), Cocaine, MDMA (Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) and Ketamine. All these are banned in the country.
This is the fifth such incident in the recent times. “The trend among youngsters has changed from ganja to synthetic drugs,” said a senior official. “Few dealers caught over the last five years were employees of IT firms, managers of private companies and engineers. They had quit their job to become a dealer. Reason: drugs pay much more than their job.”
“In a city where chain snatchings and robberies happen for the sake of ganja, the trend of synthetic drugs might have greater social disturbance in the longer run. The behaviour of consumers drastically change where people will do anything for the sake of the high they get,” says psychiatrist S Bruno Bharathi from Chennai.
When SRMC police arrested K Kumaresan (26) and C Diwakar (33) along with C Chukwu Simon Obinna (30) from Nigeria in January, their statements proved that they targeted people working in stress platforms like IT firms, MNCs where employees run behind targets.Karthik who was arrested on Friday was earning just Rs 16,000 from the television channel and Rs 70,000 profit from drug dealing.