NEW DELHI: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Saturday said that it has arrested a former DMK functionary, Jaffer Sadiq, who is being tipped to be the kingpin of the international drug trafficking network, which the agency had busted last month.
The anti-drug agency in collaboration with the Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested Sadiq, an expelled DMK party functionary in Tamil Nadu, from Delhi on the basis of specific intelligence inputs they had received.
NCB Deputy Director General (operations) Gyaneshwar Singh, while talking to reporters here, said Sadiq’s linkages with the Tamil and Hindi film industry, some “high-profile” people and also a few of the instances of “political funding” were being probed by the agency.
It is also learnt from the sources in the anti-drug agency that a high-profile DMK leader might soon be summoned by the NCB for questioning with regard to some suspected monetary transactions between him and Sadiq.
Sadiq is the “mastermind and kingpin” of the international trafficking network, which illegally exported pseudoephedrine from India to Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, Singh said.
“The NCB believes in doing an unbiased and lawful investigation. A criminal has no caste, religion or political party. Whosoever violates the NDPS law is an offender and we will investigate any such entity,” the NCB DDG (Operation) said, adding that the agency would “intensely investigate” the drug money trail in the case.
Sadiq, whose full name is Jaffar Sadiq Abdul Rehman, Singh said, went into “hiding” soon after the NCB conducted raids in Delhi in this case in February and he travelled from Chennai to Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Jaipur.
Sadiq, a producer of Tamil films, was recently expelled by the ruling DMK from the party after his name cropped up in connection with the drugs network case.
The NCB official said Sadiq told the NCB that he was the Chennai West deputy organiser of the DMK’s NRI wing.
Last month, the NCB had said that it arrested three people, all hailing from Tamil Nadu, and seized 50 kg of narcotics-making chemical pseudoephedrine during a raid at a godown of Sadiq’s company named Aventa in Delhi’s Basai Darapur area.
The searches by the NCB along with the special cell of the Delhi Police were conducted on a tip-off they received towards the end of 2023 from the Australian and New Zealand authorities about “large quantities” of pseudoephedrine concealed in desiccated coconut powder and mix food powder being smuggled into their countries from India, the NCB said in a statement.
It further said that an additional input was received from the US DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), which indicated that the source of these consignments was Delhi.
According to NCB officials, Sadiq allegedly used to get a commission worth Rs 1 lakh per kg “cut” (commission) from the smuggling of narcotics.
The agency claimed that the three arrested persons and Sadiq confessed that a total of 45 pseudoephedrine consignments were sent by them over the last 3 years, containing about 3,500 kgs of pseudoephedrine valued at over Rs 2,000 crore in the international market.
The NCB since then had been looking for Sadiq to “ascertain the source” of this pseudoephedrine and had also raided his premises in Chennai recently.
