Officials say they have discovered one of India’s largest-ever drug hauls concealed in a fizzy drinks factory.<\/p>\n
More than 20m tablets of the banned drug Mandrax, with an estimated street value of $450m (\u00a3365m), were seized in the western city of Udaipur in October.<\/p>\n
Subhas Dudhani, a Bollywood producer, was arrested in Mumbai in connection with the find, an official told reporters.<\/p>\n
It is believed the drugs were bound for South Africa and Mozambique.<\/p>\n
Najib Shah, head of the central board of excise and customs, revealed the arrest on Wednesday in New Delhi.<\/p>\n
Hunting<\/strong><\/p>\n “The total consignment was about 23.5 metric tons with an international value of 3,000 crore (rupees) [1 crore equals 10 million],” Mr Shah said.<\/p>\n The pills – discovered hidden in a secret room – are the largest synthetic drugs haul Indian officials have ever intercepted, according to Mr Shah.<\/p>\n But they are still trying to track down other people involved in the operation.<\/p>\n A customs officer told AFP on condition of anonymity: “We are on the lookout for several people involved in the drug syndicate.”<\/p>\n The recreational drug, commonly known as M-Pills, buttons or smarties, is popular on the rave scene in parts of Africa and Asia.<\/p>\n But overdosing on Methaqualone, the chemical name of Mandrax, can be fatal or leave the user in a coma.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Officials say they have discovered one of India’s largest-ever drug hauls concealed in a fizzy drinks factory. More than 20m tablets of the banned drug Mandrax, with an estimated street value of $450m (\u00a3365m), were seized in the western city of Udaipur in October. Subhas Dudhani, a Bollywood producer, was arrested in Mumbai in connection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":157028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[646,13323,893],"class_list":["post-264589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-cocaine","tag-drug-haul","tag-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/157028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}