Noida: In the last one year, police have busted three meth labs that were set up by foreigners inside rented accommodations in Greater Noida and seized more than 100 kg of drugs worth hundreds of crores.
The latest such raid was carried out on April 17 in which four Nigerian nationals were held and 26.67 kg of methylenedioxyphenethylamine, or MDMA, worth Rs 100 crore was seized.
Police recovered over 75 kg of MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, in two separate but linked raids on May 16 and May 30 last year, arresting around a dozen foreigners from residential houses where proper labs were set up for cooking meth.
The cooked meth in these two episodes was collectively valued at over Rs 350 crore, according to police.
According to police, these recoveries could be just the "tip of the iceberg" of an international drug syndicate.
In all these incidents, they found that meth in "pure form" was cooked by foreigners who worked in the lower rung of the syndicate.
This meth was sent to their contact person in Delhi and from there to Europe through channels that are yet to be investigated, an officer involved in the investigation told PTI.
"Using the raw material which was provided to them by their contacts in Delhi, the accused in Greater Noida cooked the meth. It was dried inside the houses and then given the form of a solid brick of six inch by one inch before being parcelled out to their networks in Delhi who met them on need-to-know basis," the officer said.
At least three of the several police personnel that PTI spoke to, concurred that Greater Noida, because of its less-dense residential facilities and easy connectivity to Delhi, served as an ideal place for manufacturing the drug.
Published 22 April 2024, 08:56 IST