Case filed against 28 drug dealers in Varanasi for smuggling spurious syrup

A case has been registered against 28 drug dealers, including a father-son duo, in Varanasi for allegedly smuggling codeine-laced cough syrup for intoxication, police said on Monday.

They said that an investigation by the Food Safety and Drug Administration Department revealed that Shubham Jaiswal, a resident of Prahlad Ghat, Varanasi, and his father, Bholanath Prasad, supplied large quantities of the banned adulterated syrup to 26 Varanasi-based businessmen from their Ranchi-based firm, Shaili Traders.

Subsequently, a case was registered on Saturday based on a complaint lodged by Drug Inspector Junab Ali in Varanasi, police said.

In the complaint, the drug inspector mentioned that, following the discovery that Shaili Traders had been selling large quantities of codeine-laced cough syrup in various districts of Uttar Pradesh, including Varanasi, the 26 Varanasi-based firms were inspected, and several were found to be closed.

Calls to the numbers available on the firms' portals were not reachable.

Based on this irregularity, officials concluded that the codeine-containing cough syrup was being misused for intoxication.