NCB busts pan-India drug trafficking racket

New Delhi: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has busted a pan-India drug trafficking network being run using the ‘darknet’ and has apprehended about two dozen persons allegedly involved in the racket, official sources said on Friday.

Personnel of the federal anti-narcotics agency has also been nabbed during the operation in which numerous searches were conducted in multiple states for about four months. The clandestine smuggling ring involved the use of high-end Internet tools like the ‘darknet’ for striking deals, usage of cryptocurrencies for making payments, and coded or encrypted use of social media platforms.

Darknet denotes the hidden Internet platforms that can only be accessed using specialized software and pre-configured communication protocols for anonymous communication. Drugs cartels and syndicates are known to use this to stay under the radar of law enforcement agencies.

The drug traffickers caught in this case also used private courier services and India Post networks to source recreational drugs from abroad and to ship them to domestic destinations, they said.

According to sources, the NCB operation ended recently and the agency is expected to share further details of the case with the media on Saturday.