In a dramatic escalation of India’s largest-ever crackdown on illegal codeine-based cough syrup trafficking, Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force commandos crossed into Nepal on Wednesday morning to track and apprehend the elusive masterminds who orchestrated a Rs 4.5 crore empire and vanished through the porous Bihar-Nepal border within hours of the network’s exposure, exploiting pre-arranged safe houses, local facilitators, and forged travel documents to evade immediate capture.

The international pursuit centres on 12 high-value targets — Vibhor Rana, Saurabh Tyagi, Vishal Rana, Pappan Yadav, Shadab, Manohar Jaiswal, Abhishek Sharma, Vishal Upadhyay, Bhola Prasad, Shubham Jaiswal, Akash Pathak, and Vinod Agarwal — whose names surfaced during an exhaustive Food Safety and Drug Administration investigation that uncovered a meticulously structured operation diverting medically restricted, highly addictive codeine syrups from licensed manufacturers using fake prescriptions, shell companies, and corrupt pharmacy chains.

Raids across five districts have already yielded nearly 3.5 lakh seized bottles worth Rs 4.5 crore on the black market, along with 32 arrests, revealing a sophisticated syndicate of “super stockists” who hoarded the contraband in concealed godowns before dispatching truckloads under false manifests to Nepal and Bangladesh, where each bottle fetches up to ten times its domestic price due to rampant addiction demand.

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A specially empowered Special Investigation Team is now dissecting thousands of bank transactions, benami accounts, hawala trails, and encrypted communication records, while simultaneously preparing to invoke Section 84 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita against every absconding kingpin — triggering property attachment, passport impounding, and non-bailable warrants — to ensure none can rebuild their illicit empire from abroad.

Director General of Police Rajiv Krishna personally briefed the media that irrefutable evidence of international trafficking corridors has emerged, declaring the ongoing Nepal operation a “do-or-die mission” to dismantle the entire syndicate root and branch, vowing that every fugitive will be dragged back in handcuffs to face the full might of the law before Uttar Pradesh courts.

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