Drug racket busted in Hyderabad, 9 held

The Hayathnagar police busted a drug racket and arrested nine persons on Tuesday. Around 5 kg of marijuana, 525 grams of hashish oil, a motorbike, 9 mobile phones and a weighing machine were seized from them. The police said that the gang is operating the racket between Andhra-Odisha Border and Hyderabad

The arrested persons were identified as B Indra Kumar (25), an engineering dropout and currently working as an auto driver from Nagarkurnool and Anil Kumar (25) from Kukatpally, both turned as drug peddlers for easy money making. While the remaining of the arrested persons were the consumers -- Venkata Krishna Chaitanya (27) from Alwal, Utkarsh Umang (20) from Jeedimetla, KH Bharath Reddy (24) from KPHB colony, Ch Vashista (24) from Alwal, N Shivadeekshith (24) from Bowenpally, B Somesh Kumar (25) from Visakhapatnam and K Kamalakar (24) from Kukatpally.

The police who acted on a tip-off caught Venkata Krishna Chaitanya and Utkarsh Umang in possession of 70 grams of marijuana. Upon interrogation, the two people took the police team to their room in KPHB colony, where the remaining persons were detained and marijuana and hashish oil were seized from the premises.

"Indra Kumar procured marijuana from Araku agency area in Visakhapatnam and smuggled it to Hyderabad and sold it to customers with the help of the other suspects," said an official. They were produced before court and remanded to judicial custody.

Meanwhile, the city police on Wednesday started anti-narcotics wing to curb the drug menace in the state. The wing will become functional soon with 1000 personnel and the officials to supervise the functioning of the wing are yet to be identified.