Jawans enter Beur Central Jail. Telegraph picture

Patna, June 23: Drinks are a passé. Dry drugs have dethroned the traditional booze from its seat of addiction and have paved way for rave parties in the heart of the cities.

Patna, too, has picked up the bad habit quite fast like its counterparts Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. The problem lies in the entry of drugs for the rich and the famous.

Recently, the city police recovered large consignments of “high profile” drugs like heroin and brown sugar. Now, the police suspect that the consignments were used in some get-togethers thrown by a few high-profile people of Patna.

After recovering the drugs, the police are sure that such parties are frequent in Patna nowadays.

On June 20, the police raided the Golghar campus based on a tip-off and six people were arrested with 400gms of heroin and 300gms of brown sugar worth Rs 1.25 crore in the international market.

Both the drugs were neatly packed and carried a Thailand tag on them. Though the police have not said anything about the buyers of the consignment, they suspect the drugs are being sold in the state capital itself mainly for parties.

“There have been cases which can justify the claim. It is a fact that Patna has been host to rave parties. On May 8, the Gandhi Maidan police raided the Mirchi Cola restaurant where such a party was organised. Twelve men and four women — who were brought to the party by one Zafar Khan, a pimp, who used to arrange women for such parties — were arrested. Many liquor crates were recovered from the restaurant, which does not have a license to sell alcohol. Now, the recovery of the drugs has raised suspicion that they are being supplied to such parties,” Patna city superintendent of police Shivdeep Lande said.

Police sources said the June 13 incident, when the police had recovered a young girl roaming aimlessly in the Patliputra police station area, was also a doubtful case.

“The girl was under the influence of some substance and it was alleged that someone had spiked her drink. If it had been liquor, it would have smelled for sure. Later, the police took the girl to her parents living in the Digha area. Though no medical tests were carried out, there is a suspicion of the use of drugs,” another police officer said.

The police have now mobilised their sources and are trying to find out about such parties in order to get a breakthrough into the nexus.

“The police will be looking for such suspicious parties so that use of drugs could be traced,” a police source said.

Earlier, senior police officers had said that since the drugs carried a tag of a country in south-east Asia, it was possible that these drugs were manufactured in the infamous “Golden Triangle” of drugs and then exported to the rest of the world, including India.

Police said that the “Golden Triangle” —the area between Thailand, Burma, Laos and Vietnam — were one of the biggest producers of drugs in the world. It is then supplied to different parts of the globe.

The drugs are brought to cities like Guwahati and Calcutta through flights before being transported to other cities, including Patna, by road.