HYDERABAD/WARANGAL: The tentacles of drugs have reached the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Warangal. In a joint operation on Wednesday, sleuths of the prohibition and excise department in Hyderabad and Warangal, arrested two final year students of NIT involved in procuring, consuming and selling of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD), and seized five strips of LSD from them.
The students, identified as Y Ramesh and G Dwijj of Hyderabad, used to procure LSD through darknet websites and sell the same to prospective clients. They belong to the 2012 batch of NIT and have been staying in the hostel for appearing for examinations to clear the final year backlogs.
Excise officials, who had been till now under the impression that drug abuse and sale were confined to Hyderabad, were shocked to know that the students of a premium institute like NIT were involved in drug peddling. The incident has put students of NIT and Kakatiya University under the scanner of enforcement officials. According to Prohibition and Excise Enforcement Warangal deputy commissioner Suresh Rathod, the team, on a tip-off, intercepted the students near NIT petrol pump and, during a search of their hostel room, found five strips of LSD.
They were taken into custody along with their laptops and cellphones. “We got information from our counterparts in Hyderabad that two students of NIT were consuming and selling LSD. After investigation, we zeroed in on them. We have got a few leads from them and are working on them,” he said. The accused revealed to the Excise officials that they had sold the drug to five persons.
“Based on the leads given by the accused, we are probing if others were involved in the racket,” Rathod said. “If someone from Hyderabad wanted to buy LSD blots, the students used to pack it in an envelope, hand it to drivers of buses going from Warangal to Hyderabad saying that their friends would collect it at a particular point,” excise officials said. Each blot was sold at `2,000. Dwijj, who reside Hyderabad, used to place orders for LSD on darknet websites and get the consignment through courier. After receiving the consignment, he would bring it to NIT and sell it.
NIT to take action against the two students
NIT faculty and students were shocked on hearing the arrest of two students by the excise officials. “We are shocked by the development. We will initiate action against the two students. We will also conduct a probe to check whether other students are involved in the drug racket,” NIT Dean (students’ affairs) SVS
Ramana Reddy told Express. According to him, the security personnel of the institute regularly check student hostel rooms and keep a watch on their activities. “We will be more vigilant now and see that such incidents do not occur in future,” he said.