In a crackdown on illegal drug trade, officials on Thursday seized over 8,000 bottles of regulated codeine-based cough syrup from a warehouse in Bahraich and arrested a trader under the NDPS Act.
District Drug Inspector Vinay Krishn said the recovery was made during a joint raid conducted on Wednesday by the Drug Department and police teams from the Dargah Sharif and Rupaideha police areas.
Acting on a tip-off, the team raided an illegal warehouse in Parsaura village under the Dargah Sharif police station limits, where the cough syrup bottles were found stored in cartons, he said.
The accused, Ajay Kumar Yadav, was booked under Section 8/21 of the NDPS Act, arrested and sent to jail, the officer said.
According to the drug inspector, Yadav held a licence to sell medicines at a different address, but had no valid licence for the warehouse where the regulated codeine-based cough syrup was allegedly being stored.
Krishn said the district administration was continuing its drive against the illegal trade in narcotic and regulated medicines.
He said that two days earlier, a joint raid at an Ayurvedic medicine store in the Rupaideha area along the India-Nepal border had led to the seizure of more than 2,000 bottles of codeine-based cough syrup and other regulated medicines.
The store operator, Aditya Kumar Mishra, was also arrested under the NDPS Act and sent to jail.
The drug inspector said police and the Drug Department were investigating the forward and backward linkages in both cases to identify the entire supply and distribution network involved in the illegal trade of regulated medicines.
(With inputs from PTI)