Meth labs, Mexican cooks show Delhi in grip of drugs

NEW DELHI: A methamphetamine lab in the capital was unheard of. As was the presence of Mexican chemical experts, aka 'cooks'. That is why the law enforcement agencies went into a tizzy over an explosion in a meth lab in a house in north Delhi that caused the death of two African-origin cooks. This was in Feb, just around the time when Narcotics Control Bureau arrested three Mexican cooks and dismantled the lab they had set up.

However, the sequence of events that unfolded since Jan indicates that Delhi and NCR may already be in meth's grip. It started with Dwarka police dismantling a meth lab. The visuals of the two arrested cooks sporting their special gear and gas masks was reminiscent of the television crime drama Breaking Bad. Then came the arrest of nine members of a syndicate, including the Mexican cooks who helped set up labs and gave recipes for producing good quality Meth.
Interestingly, the Delhi arrests took place just when the Mexican law enforcement agencies seized over 40 tonnes of methamphetamine in the biggest drug lab found. The Mexican authorities told the local press that the seized meth was bound for Asia, Europe and the United States.
The arrests were in sync with the analysis by global narcotic investigators that the crackdown on meth cartels in Mexico had resulted in a massive exodus of the chemical experts, now ‘cooks-for-hire’, to various countries. Mexican cooks are now available for building super labs across the globe, providing their expert advice for a steep price. Delhi has witnessed one such instance.
Cooking crystal meth has four main risks, say experts. One can get busted, a rival gang can kill for the product, one can inhale the toxic fumes and fall sick or die, or one can blow himself up while cooking. Barely two weeks after the arrest of Mexican cooks by NCB, one of the biggest risks came true in Delhi when there was an explosion in a meth lab in north Delhi that resulted in two deaths.
It took the cops over a week to conclusively establish that the duo had died due to an explosion in a meth Lab being run by them in their flat. The shocking disclosure — which marked the first meth-lab related deaths in the capital — led the cops to take disciplinary action against several policemen for not verifying the antecedents of the tenants who had rented the house and converted it into a drugs lab.
The deaths were confirmed as the result of a meth-lab explosion after the Dwarka police arrested a 29-year-old Nigerian national named John Udechukwu. The duo who died were his associates, he admitted to police. The cops recovered 129 grams of high-quality methamphetamine and 17 kg of raw materials for drug production from the accused.
Udechukwu led the cops to another lab from where 61.5 kg of raw materials and equipment like heating, mantle machine, borosilicate glass reagent bottle, flasks, high-quality face masks and gloves were recovered. This was another sign that it was not just a small scale drug-making but a full-fledged manufacturing under way.
Last week's operation by police showed the influx of ‘meth in tea bags’ which established that cartels based in China and Myanmar had jumped into the fray and were actively pushing their trademark meth which has become a challenge for the law enforcement agencies across the globe, particularly in the Asian region.
The sequence of events that has rapidly unfolded indicates the need for an organised, coordinated action against the meth cartels before it engulfs the city, according to investigators.