The City Task Force (CTF) officials, in coordination with the Kancharapalem police, raided a medical shop at Burma Camp and seized around 850 Pentazocine Lactate Injections which are generally used as psychotropic substances here on Thursday night.
The arrested were identified as G. Kalyan Kumar (40), who runs the medical shop, Ch. Prasad (27), P. Ram Prasad (26), V. Bala Appala Swamy (36) and P. Santosh Kumar (23), all from Kancharapalem.
Police Commissioner C.M. Trivikrama Varma said that it was found that Kalyan Kumar had been selling the sedative injections for th the last one month. He used to purchase the injections from a person named Harish, who is a dealer of a renowned online shopping app from Gujarat. It was also found that the accused used to procure one injection for about ₹11 and would sell for ₹250. He said that the other accused in the case used to consume and sell the same to other persons.
He said that the accused had procured 1,000 sedative injections in which 150 injections were already sold.
Mr. Trivikrama Varma said that the Pentazocine Lactate injection are used as a painkiller at the time of surgical operations and it can only be sold by the hospitals or medical shops, which have the licence to sell such drugs. The injection should be administered by a medical surgeon and the usage should be recorded.
“The Visakhapatnam police would write to the Gujarat government about the case,” he said, adding that “While these sedative injections cannot be sold without prescription, some dealers are selling it online shockingly.”
