KOCHI: The excise team, probing the seizure of LSD stamps that arrived in Kochi from Netherlands and Qatar via courier on Tuesday, suspects that the transactions were done using cryptocurrency and the drug was purchased on the Dark Web.
Excise will seek permission for the formal arrest of key accused K Fazalu (34) of Mankavu, who was arrested by another team in Kozhikode after seizing drugs from his home on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, two more cases were registered and one more person was arrested on Thursday after finding that Fazalu had sent two couriers containing drugs from a courier firm in Mankavu.
While one was sent to an address outside Kerala, the other (containing 0.917g of methamphetamine) was received by Govindraj Kammath in Mattancherry.
Kammath was arrested by the excise and released on bail. Officers seized four MDMA pills (weighing over 2.14g) from the other parcel and are trying to trace the recipient.
On Tuesday, the excise foiled an attempt to smuggle 31 LSD stamps from foreign countries that arrived in two parcels at International Mail Centre in Kochi.
A parcel from Doha containing 26 LSD stamps had Fazalu’s address. A raid at his home resulted in seizure of 1.43kg of hashish oil, 83 LSD stamps, 3.15g cocaine and 2.74g MDMA on Wednesday. Fazalu is in judicial custody in Kozhikode.
The second parcel from the Netherlands contained 5 LSD stamps and was addressed to Aditya (23) in Thiruvananthapuram.
He is allegedly an accused in several NDPS cases and was arrested for attacking an excise CI. Excise team in Thiruvananthapuram arrested and brought him to Kochi. He was remanded in judicial custody later.
Excise plans to seek the custody of all three individuals for a detailed probe considering the gravity of smuggling synthetic drugs from foreign countries.
“The seizure of 31 LSD stamps from IMC led to the seizure of drugs from Fazalu’s house. Later we found he sent two couriers. He used two different fake sender addresses for the couriers but the mobile number was the same and this helped us to trace the parcels. The case shows that couriers are widely used for drug smuggling, transactions. We suspect the purchase was done on the Dark Web and the payment mode was cryptocurrency. If so, it will be difficult to find evidence. We are checking bank, phone details of the accused,” said deputy excise commissioner (Ernakulam) P V Elias.
The probe is led by a team headed by assistant commissioner (Enforcement) Tenymon B, said Elias.
