Indore: Police on Sunday busted an inter-state racket involved in the production and supply of drugs and arrested five persons besides recovering 151 kilograms of synthetic drugs worth Rs 15 crore from their possession. The drugs were being manufactured at a poultry feed production unit in RNT Marg area, using alprazolam and paracetamol tablets and other narcotic substances brought from Delhi and Muzaffarpur.

The police said that two of the accused Kartik Baghel, a resident of Banganga and Mohammad Arif, a resident of Sanwer, were arrested with one kilogram of drugs in Sirpur on Friday night. Based on their information, the main suppliers Komal Sahriya, Ajay Jadon and Dinesh Rathore, were arrested from the Banganga area on Saturday night.

A currency counting machine, Rs 4 lakh cash, a mixer, drums, face masks and other equipment was seized from their possession. The poultry feed production unit owner Raghav Bhattjiwal is on the run. “The accused used to bring raw material – a mixture of Alprazolam and different kinds of semi-synthetic drugs, from Muzaffarpur, and later mixed it with paracetamol through a chemical process to double the quantity. It was then supplied to local peddlers for sale,” Chandan Nagar police station in charge Dilip Puri said.

He said that while Ajay and Komal used to look after production, Dinesh and the other two worked as peddlers and looked after-sale and distribution of the drug in the market. “They supplied drugs in the market for half the price of brown sugar 10gm for Rs 4,000,” Puri said. “Once the buyer got addicted to it, the accused used to sell it for almost double the price, generating a huge amount of profit,” he said. All five have been booked under relevant sections of the NDPS Act.