Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday refused to accept the Samajwadi Party’s demand in the Assembly for a discussion on the illegal trade of codeine cough syrup, asserting that the case was being probed.
“An investigation is on and 78 accused are behind bars. The allegation that some people died after consuming codeine cough syrup in Uttar Pradesh is wrong. No such death was reported here,” Adityanath told the House, which was convened to seek approval for a supplementary demand of around ₹24,000 crore.
Dissatisfied with the government’s response, the SP members rushed into the Well of the House and raised slogans.
Seeking to turn up the heat on the Opposition party, Adityanath said the SP government had itself issued a licence to manufacturers and suppliers of codeine cough syrup in 2016.
“We are all set to take legal action against every person involved in it. We will also engage bulldozers (to demolish properties) against illegal cough syrup manufacturers and suppliers and hope that you will not make an unnecessary hue and cry over it,” the chief minister said.
Without taking names, he took a jibe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and SP president Akhilesh Yadav for stirring up a controversy but avoiding a debate on it.
“There are two namoone (specimens) in the country, one in Delhi and the other in Lucknow. They run away to foreign countries after demanding a debate here. I am sure Babua will soon leave for London,” Adityanath said.
The BJP leaders address Akhilesh as Babua (kid) and claim that he has some business interests in the UK.
Parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Kumar Khanna said: “There was no need for a separate slot for debate when the chief minister has replied to the allegations.”
The angry SP members staged a walkout and sat on a dharna for over an hour outside the Assembly Hall. They held up pictures of Shubham Jaiswal, the alleged kingpin of the cough syrup racket, with deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak.
A picture of Shubham with Akhilesh had surfaced last month.
The Telegraph has not been able to determine the veracity of these pictures.
Some cough syrups contain a limited quantity of codeine, which is regulated under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The Opposition has claimed that a nexus of BJP politicians, drug inspectors, suppliers and sellers is minting money by flooding the market with narcotics packaged as cough syrup.
Leader of the Opposition Mata Prasad Pandey told reporters that the police used to arrest students found abusing cough syrups in the pre-BJP era but the current regime had given a free rein to drug manufacturers and suppliers.
“The BJP government never tried to get to the root of such activities because those involved in the racket were directly or indirectly linked to the party,” he said.
A source in the Uttar Pradesh police said that a special investigation team had submitted an inquiry report on the trade of illegal cough syrup, along with reports of the special task force and the Food Safety and Drug Administration, to the chief minister on Monday. The Enforcement Directorate has also detected the involvement of some hawala agents in the trade. “We believe that some terror networks in Bangladesh and western Uttar Pradesh are connected to this trade and diverting their earnings for anti-national activities,” the source said.
A senior police officer in Lucknow on Monday said Shubham, who had fled to Dubai, and his father Bhola Jaiswal, who was arrested last month from Calcutta airport, had supplied 2.24 crore bottles of the cough syrup through a trading company in Ranchi and made ₹500 crore.
“Some papers recovered from the houses and offices linked to the duo suggest that they were supposed to send these cough syrup bottles to 17 districts of the country but they diverted them to Tripura, from where the consignment was smuggled to Bangladesh,” the officer said on the condition of anonymity, adding that they raked in over ₹2,000 crore in just eight years through this illegal trade.
Varanasi, from where Shubham and half a dozen other accused hail, is the nerve centre of the racket.
“Some Islamic groups of Bangladesh known for conducting terror activities in India supplied these syrups to the Gulf countries. They had joined this network with the help of some groups active in western Uttar Pradesh. That made Shubham’s escape to Dubai easy,” another police officer said, requesting anonymity.
The government has announced a reward of ₹50,000 for those who help the police in arresting Shubham.
SP leaders have dubbed it an eyewash. “The real drug mafia of Uttar Pradesh operate confidently under BJP rule and they are given protection,” Akhilesh had said on Sunday.