PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE /Dehradun
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has uncovered an alleged international Captagon drug manufacturing and smuggling network during its Operation RAGEPILL. Following the raid, an NCB from Delhi sealed the Green Herbal factory in Dehradun on Saturday, where the drugs were allegedly being manufactured.
Officials said the agency seized 227.2 kilogrammes of Captagon tablets and powder and arrested two persons, including a Syrian national in Delhi and the factory owner in Dehradun.
According to sources, the NCB unearthed the laboratory after questioning Alabras Ahmed, the Syrian national who was arrested on May 11 and is the lookout for a second Syrian national who prepared the drug in the Dehradun laboratory.
Last week, 31.5 kilogrammes of the drug was seized from a house in Delhi’s Neb Sarai, where Ahmed lived, and 196.2 kilogrammes was seized from a container at the Mundra port in Gujarat. Both seizures were cumulatively valued at Rs 182 crore.
On the basis of anonymity an officer aware of this matter said that the factory owner Sanjay Kumar reportedly charged the Syrian national Rs 50,000 daily rent for using the premises to manufacture the drug. “This is the first case to come to light of drug traffickers manufacturing Captagon in a clandestine laboratory,” he added. Kumar is reportedly a native of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh who was earlier arrested for misusing his food license to make chemicals at his factory in Dehradun in 2025 and was out on bail.
