THE Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Saturday arrested 36-year-old Jaffer Sadiq, an expelled DMK party functionary in Tamil Nadu, in connection with an international drugs trafficking racket investigation estimated to be worth more than Rs 2,000 crore. NCB Deputy Director General (operations) Gyaneshwar Singh told reporters here that Sadiq’s linkages with the Tamil and Hindi film industry, some “high-profile” people apart from some instances of “political funding” were under the scanner of the agency. Sources told PTI that a high-profile DMK leader could soon be summoned by the NCB for questioning with regard to some monetary transactions worth a few lakhs.

 

Sadiq was arrested in Delhi on the basis of specific intelligence inputs and he is the “mastermind and kingpin” of a trans-national pseudoephedrine smuggling racket spread across Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia from India, Singh said. “The NCB believes in doing an unbiased and lawful investigation. A criminal has no caste, religion or political party. Whosoever violates the NDPS law is an offender and we will investigate any such entity. “We will intensely investigate the drug money trail in this case,” Singh said when asked if any political persons were under the scanner of the agency.

 

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will soon register a money laundering case to probe this racket by taking cognisance of this NCB case, ED sources said. He said Sadiq, whose full name is Jaffar Sadiq Abdul Rehman, went into “hiding” soon after the agency conducted raids in Delhi in this case in February. Sadiq, a producer of Tamil films, was recently expelled by the ruling DMK from the party.