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Mythili (name changed to protect identity), a 36-year-old woman from Nizampet in Hyderabad, had a good life: two little kids, a villa in an upscale gated community, and a husband living in the Gulf who would send her a generous allowance of ₹3 lakh a month for expenses. With her close circle of friends, she’d spend weekends at a bistro, transitioning into a nightclub as the sun set. On February 2 this year, she was arrested by the Hyderabad police on charges of peddling cocaine.
In August 2022, Mythili met alleged drug peddler Suleman bin Abubakar, 31, at a posh nightclub in Gachibowli. Striking up a conversation over a drink, Suleman had slipped her a sample of cocaine and MDMA for free, says the police. A few more meetings with Suleman followed, and Mythili went from being a casual drug user to a peddler, procuring drugs from Suleman and selling it to her friends, claim the police.
Abubakar, as per the police, would identify young, vulnerable people in nightclubs, and get them to sample drugs like cocaine and MDMA for free. Once they took the bait, he would channel drugs through them. Mythili’s arrest helped the Cyberabad police bust Abubakar’s network, which was reportedly one of many avenues through which drugs like cocaine, MDMA, and LSD are being pumped into the city.
Within a month of her arrest, Mythili’s bail was posted. Her husband returned to India and the family vacated the villa within a week, said the staff at the gated community. According to Mythili’s confession to the police, a copy of which is in possession with The Hindu, she got 17 of her friends to sample the drugs supplied by Abubakar.
The easy availability of drugs in the city is becoming increasingly evident from the series of seizures. Last year, there were 243 drug seizures in Hyderabad, with a total of 740 persons being booked by the police (727 Indians and 13 foreign nationals). This number is a stark rise when compared to 2019, when there were 88 drug seizures, with 196 persons being booked (195 Indians, and one foreign national).
“However, there is a lot more that goes undetected,” say officials of the Telangana State Anti-Narcotics Bureau (TSNAB).
A secret society
Anjana Jain (name changed on request), 29, was planning to host an intimate rave party for a select group of friends, and wanted to see if she could get her hands on some cocaine. At a social gathering, she got the phone number of a person who was known to be ‘Hyderabad’s best cocaine supplier’.
As she hurried home, she called him. The supplier asked her for multiple references. He agreed to sell her the drugs only after he was satisfied that she was not a part of a law-enforcement agency. Then, a meeting was set up in the middle of a bustling, popular city market in Dhoolpet.
“They really sense how desperate you are,” Anjana explained. “The market was teeming with families out for their weekly shopping. The deal happened right there. That’s how seamlessly drugs flow in the city,” Anjana said.
In another such case, Jhanvi Gupta (name changed), 31, says her taxi driver turned out to be her supplier. “All I did that evening was ask him if I could light a cigarette,” she said. He led the conversation from there. On the day Jhanvi was to throw a party for her friends, her taxi driver had the drugs delivered to Gachibowli.
Long road to recovery
The consequences of this drastic rise in drug consumption are beginning to show. Private deaddiction clinics in the city are reporting a steep rise in the number of inquiries. According to V.S. Gideon of Living Sober Rehabilitation Centre, most people he has been treating are those in their 20s involved in multi-drug abuse.
“The addiction to drugs starts off with irrational consumption of marijuana (ganja). Users move on to ‘higher order’ drugs such as cocaine, MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy or molly), and LSD blots, among others,” he says. While the road to deaddiction is rewarding, the process can be tedious and difficult and the support of family members is crucial, especially when withdrawal symptoms surface, say experts.
The age of drug addicts has come down from the mid-20s to as low as 16-25 years, Dr. Gideon underlined, and most of them are multi-drug abuse cases, leading to severe mental health disorders. Moreover, drug addiction cases have gone up significantly after the pandemic, with inquiries for deaddiction therapy going up by at least five to ten times within the past two years alone, he says.
The deaddiction ward at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Hyderabad, has seen 771 people being registered in the first three months of 2024. Out of these, 66 cases were identified as critical and registered as inpatients, and at least one person was referred to the emergency ward of Osmania General Hospital (OGH). In 2023, an astounding 4,343 cases of drug addiction were registered with the ward.
“Of all the drug cases in the city, only 10–20% are being reported at hospitals,” explained Kondiparthi Sai Madhulika, Medical Officer at the Drug Treatment Clinic of the IMH. “Most of the cases that come to us are of alcohol abuse, tobacco overuse, and marijuana addiction. Some have required immediate admission into the deaddiction ward,” Dr. Madhulika said.
She has found that most people who use synthetic drugs come from affluent families and are reluctant to visit public health facilities to undergo treatment for deaddiction. “They would prefer to go to top-notch private deaddiction centres which offer discreet treatment.”
Withdrawal symptoms
In what could possibly be a case of withdrawal symptoms, two undertrial prisoners at the Cherlapally jail, located on the fringes of Hyderabad, Ibrahim Khaleel and Fareed Quadri, created a ruckus inside their prison cell demanding that they be given drugs. Prison officials claimed the undertrials allegedly banged their heads against the wall and threatened to harm themselves if their demands were not met. A case was later lodged against the two.
“The duo tried to injure themselves demanding drugs from the jail officials from inside their cell. When guards went to subdue them, they picked up a fight with them. We isolated the duo and deployed additional guards outside their barracks,” said Superintendent of Cherlapally Prisons, Santosh Roy, adding that the undertrials were arrested on charges of murder and attempted murder and were also booked under the National Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985. The men had reportedly exhibited similar behaviour when they were incarcerated at the Chanchalguda jail. Khaleel and Quadri were transferred to Cherlapally as a disciplinary action about a month ago.
Such manifestations of drug-seeking behaviour even inside prisons, point to an alarming situation. “When an addict is in the throes of withdrawal symptoms, they might go to any extent to get access to drugs. They even go to the extent of harming others, or even themselves, during such meltdowns,” Dr. Gideon explains.
Connecting the dots
Meanwhile, another jail, located about 720 km away in Goa, has a different story to tell. A few inmates of the Colvale Central Jail are reportedly sitting at the top of an extensive drug network that has spread its tentacles across the country, including Hyderabad. The prison has now become an epicentre for one of the most well-oiled drug rackets in the country, layers of which are being peeled away by the Telangana police.
The Cyberabad police stumbled upon this network with the arrest of Mythili, who tipped them off about Abubakar and his accomplices Shaik Armaan, 34, and Arqamum Hussain, 27. Police then connected the dots between Abubakar and the Colvale prison, and ended up getting a much clearer picture of the extent to which the network has spread across the country.
At the very top of the network sits Faisal, alias Mohammad Osman, say police. Faisal has emerged as a common link in at least four to five major drug cases in Hyderabad in the recent past. So extensive is his network that it has penetrated all major cities in the country. Key details about Faisal’s network were gleaned by the police from the interrogation of a Nigerian national named Iwala Udoka Stanley, age, who was arrested in the first week of February by the Punjagutta police with a large consignment of drugs worth nearly ₹8 crore. Stanley was in close contact with Faisal and another Nigerian national named Okra, who was also incarcerated at the Colvale jail.
Sandeep Shandilya, Director of Telangana State Anti-Narcotics Bureau (TSNAB), said that at least 10 cargo flights took off from Belgium and Paris and landed in Maharashtra in the last six months with significant quantities of synthetic drugs. They were being delivered to Stanley, and to customers through his network. “The contraband surprisingly went undetected during Customs checks and entered the country in parcels through renowned international courier services or in the form of ingested capsules,” Shandilya said.
Well-oiled network
Suppliers have been traced to countries like the Netherlands. “The network is so exhaustively spread out that we had to rope in the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and also write to the Customs Department to increase their vigilance at airports receiving foreign shipments,” said he added.
The Colvale syndicate’s key players in Hyderabad were two people named Abdul Rahman alias Abdullah and Milansi Narendrasi Vanath. Rahman was arrested by the Gachibowli police on March 20. Vanath, known to be Faisal’s accountant, was arrested on the same day. This was followed by the arrest of Faisal’s right-hand man Sarfaraz, who was reportedly operating the network for his friend for the last eight years, as per the police.
In the week that followed his arrest, Rahman named at least 30 other drug peddlers associated with the network in Hyderabad. Another accused, Sarfaraz, revealed the details of at least 10 major suppliers associated with the network spread across different parts of the country.
Further investigations led to the arrest of Awni Hassan Abu Aklas, a major drug dealer, in New Delhi on March 22. Awni has reportedly smuggled over 5.20 kg of cocaine and MDMA into Hyderabad on more than 50 occasions.
The network is operated through an extensive list of phone numbers and bank accounts across several States. Sixteen phones were seized from inmates in Goa’s jail after the Telangana police alerted them to the network. Eight phones were seized from Stanley alone.
Faisal uses a UK-based number to make WhatsApp calls and chats to take orders from his clients, and an Indian number to receive online payments. Another accomplice operated three Indian and two international numbers. Moreover, at least 10-12 bank accounts of various private and government banks were being used for financial transactions with suppliers, the interrogation reports revealed. As per the officials, transactions worth ₹97 lakh have already been traced through these accounts.
