COIMBATORE: The city police on Monday night arrested seven people, including a medical store owner for procuring and supplying painkillers and sedative tablets for youths to get high. Police seized 1.6kg of ganja, 350 tapentadol tablets, 67 nitrazepam tablets, eight mobile phones, two motorcycles, and 93,000 in cash from the accused. Seven bank accounts belonging to the drug peddlers were also frozen by the police.
The arrested have been identified as J Newton, 27, of Devarayapuram, K Ramesh, 25, P Soundarraj, 26, and K Ragul, 24, of Chettipalayam near Perur, B Mohammed Anas, 30, of Vincent Road at Ukkadam, G Ramprasath, 36, of Chokkampudur, and B Sudarsan from Palakkad district in Kerala, who owned a medical shop named ‘Dhaya’ at Mannarkkad in Kerala. While six of the accused were arrested by the enforcement bureau police in the city, another team arrested Sudarsan in Kerala.
A special team headed by enforcement bureau inspector S Senthilkumar, along with sub-inspectors Miadit Mano, Jecis Udhayaraj, and Baskaran were involved in busting the racket and arresting the accused. Preliminary investigations revealed that six of the accused prepared fake prescriptions to obtain sedative and painkiller pills from Sudarsan.
“They downloaded doctors’ prescriptions in PDF format from several websites and edited the PDF files. They then produced the doctored prescriptions with fake signatures to Sudarsan, who supplied the pills to them,” said Dr K Saravanakumar, deputy commissioner of police (South), Coimbatore city. He added that Sudarsan knew of their illegal activities and continued to supply the drugs.
All seven were produced before a judicial magistrate and later remanded in judicial custody. They were lodged at the Coimbatore Central Prison on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Coimbatore city police commissioner V Balakrishnan warned that medical shops should not sell such tablets without prescriptions. “If a medical shop representative finds a prescription to be suspicious, they should immediately alert the police. We are working to make Coimbatore city drug-free,” the commissioner emphasised.
