CHENNAI: Director General of Police Shankar Jiwal said on Thursday the amount mentioned by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in Jaffer Sadiq case could be incorrect.
He was replying to questions raised by reporters at Chennai City Police Commissioner’s Office which was held to award badges and certificates to members of anti-drug clubs functioning in city colleges.
Jiwal said, “The market price of pseudoephedrine seized by the NCB is Rs 4,500 to Rs 6,000 per kg. The bureau has said using pseudoephedrine, a drug will be manufactured abroad worth more than Rs 2,000 crore. The chemical should be measured based on its own market price and not that of the manufactured drug. I will not comment on the ongoing investigation, but the amount seems to be incorrect.”
In case of ‘abin’, a chemical which is used to manufacture heroin, the market rate is around Rs 10,000 to 12,000 but heroin is worth a crore. So, the worth of ‘abin’ should not be calculated by the worth of heroin, he added.
On the picture of Jaffer Sadiq receiving a memento from Jiwal, he said, “It was at a CCTV camera inauguration event in the city where sponsors of cameras were given memento. Sadiq too, through his company, had sponsored 10 cameras and was given a memento. As of now, those cameras have been removed and replaced. It was not like he was given an award.”
Talking about the number of cases Sadiq has been involved in, Chenai City Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore said he has been named only in two drug cases -- one filed in 2013 at MKB Nagar police station from which he was acquitted in 2017 and one in 2016 at RK Nagar police station. The NCB is yet to contact TN police in the investigation of Sadiq case.
On recent incidents of bomb hoax in the city, Jiwal said, “In the last two months, there have been around 26 such instances. Out of these, 19 were sent through a mail service called Proton. Others were sent through Outlook and Mail2Tor. While initially, Proton company did not give details, we sent a request to the union government to block Proton services in India. Now the company has started giving the details.”
Later in the night, the city police sent a clarification saying Jaffer Sadiq was involved in only one NDPS cases in MKB Nagar in 2013 which ended in his acquittal in 2017.