NEW DELHI: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) said it recently busted a methamphetamine laboratory in Greater Noida and seized 95kg of the contraband worth several crores. The lab, in Kasana industrial area of Gautam Budh Nagar, was being run by a west Delhi businessman and a Tihar jail warden, with a Mumbai-based chemist “cooking” the drug. If that doesn’t recall the American TV series ‘Breaking Bad’, there’s more. NCB said the lab was linked to an infamous Mexican drug cartel, and one of its members oversaw “quality control” at the lab.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the businessman came into contact with the jail warden when he was arrested earlier and lodged in Tihar jail. They were instrumental in setting up the illegal factory. NCB sleuths recovered chemicals such as acetone and sodium hydroxide, and imported machinery in the raid on Oct 25. Four suspects, including a Mumbai-based businessman, have been arrested so far and remanded in police custody on Oct 27 for three days. NCB was tight-lipped on the details of the arrests as the operation is ongoing.
NCB said this Delhi-based syndicate, which produced synthetic drugs for export and domestic consumption, was linked to Mexico’s ‘CJNG cartel’, which is locked in a deadly battle with the Sinaloa cartel once run by infamous Mexican drug lord Chapo Guzman. CJNG — Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion — has been looking to expand in South Asia, India in particular, NCB said.
According to America’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Ruben Oseguera-Cervantes, alias ‘El Mencho’, is the founder and current chief of CJNG and is on the list of most-wanted men in the US and Mexico. The cartel is rumoured to indulge in cannibalism as a form of psychological warfare. A report in a local newspaper claimed that even minors were involved in the training to eat the flesh of victims.
The cartel, the DEA says, rose to power around 2009, as leaders of the Valencia/Milenio Cartel began to lose power due to arrests and capture. CJNG is known to produce multi-hundred kilogramme quantities of methamphetamine and heroin, and move multi-ton quantities of cocaine.
The latest operation comes eight months after NCB busted another meth lab in Feb and arrested nine people, including three Mexican chemists, or “cooks”. It had seized more than 15kg of methamphetamine and 9kg of pseudoephedrine, among other chemicals. The cartel operated across Delhi-NCR, Punjab, Rajasthan, and internationally in Dubai, and counted Indians, Mexicans, Canadians, and British citizens among its members.
NCB has busted five such clandestine labs this year, located in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. To combat this emerging threat, NCB is also conducting training programmes nationwide, collaborating with international agencies like DEA.