At least 95000 bottles of cough syrup worth Rs 20 crore seized in Assam, 2 arrested

Two people were arrested during the seizure, who have been identified as Bhabesh Kumar and Saminur Islam. According to the police, 95,360 bottles of cough syrup were confiscated from three vehicles on Tuesday night.

After receiving a tip-off, a team of Karimganj district police stopped three trucks at the Churaibari check-post near the Assam-Tripura border.

"We found 95,360 bottles of cough syrup in the trucks. We have arrested two people," a senior police officer said.

According to the officer, the total market value of the seized cough syrup will be around Rs 20 crore.

Read also: Assam: 33000 bottles of cough syrup worth Rs 2 crore seized, 3 apprehended

Partha Protim Das, Superintendent of Police of Karimganj district, told IANS, "Huge quantities of cough syrup were transported illegally without any papers. The trucks were coming from the Guwahati side and these Codeine-based cough syrups were supposedly being smuggled to Bangladesh."

Notably, last Monday, Assam Police had seized 780 bottles of codeine-phosphate syrup from near the Assam-Tripura border in the Churaibari area of Karimganj district, and arrested one person.

Read also: Imported medicines worth over Rs 7 lakh seized by Haryana FDA

Medical Dialogues team has recently reported that the Anti Narcotics Cell of Mumbai police has also busted an interstate drug smuggling racket with the arrest of two persons and seizure of codeine-based cough syrup worth nearly Rs 35 lakh, an official said on Saturday. Cough syrups with an ingredient of codeine phosphate have an intoxicating effect on nerves and they are widely abused due to easy availability at chemist shops.