New Delhi: In a major crackdown on the narcotics trade, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) busted two international drug cartels operating through the darknet and arrested 22 individuals with a huge cache of 29,103 blots of deadly LSD in the last three months, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday.


He said that the breakthrough was achieved in pursuing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a drug-free India.


"It reaffirms our belief that no matter what advanced technology drug traffickers employ, they can never escape the clutches of our agencies," Shah tweeted.






Earlier in the day, NCB said it has busted the "biggest" darknet-based LSD cartel operating in India and seized around 13,000 LSD blots, Rs 26 lakh in cash. The agency stated that it has arrested three persons in connection with the drug cartel, reported news agency PTI.


NCB Deputy Director General (operations and enforcement) Gyaneshwar Singh said that the cartel named 'Zambada' has a "high volume of business and supply chain" of this hallucinogenic category of drug and is also operating in the UK, the US, South Africa, Canada, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkiye.


It is the second LSD trafficking cartel busted by the agency in the last about three months.


Earlier in June, the central agency had seized a cache of 15,000 LSD blots, the highest-ever catch in one operation, and arrested half-a-dozen people.


As part of the two busts, NCB has registered a total of six cases in Delhi under the provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) leading to the arrest of 22 Indians till now.


The two operations led to a total seizure of 29,013 LSD blots and 472 grams of MDMA powder and the freezing of Rs.51.38 lakh cash or "drug money".