Sanjay Singh arrested by GRP along with 3740 bottles of Phensedyl at Guwahati station. Picture by UB Photos

May 2: Government Railway Police (GRP) seized 3,750 bottles of Phensedyl cough syrup from a Delhi-Guwahati train and arrested one person on Wednesday.

The contraband, stuffed in 15 cartons, was seized at Guwahati railway station in Paltan Bazar. Each bottle contains 100ml of the cough syrup.

The police suspect the consignment was meant either for sale in the city market or for being smuggled to Bangladesh through different routes. The market price of the seized contraband is estimated to be Rs 3 lakh, which may go up to Rs 5 lakh in the black market.

Phensedyl contains a codeine-based substance and is often used as a narcotic.

The product has a huge demand in Bangladesh and smugglers use Guwahati as a transit route to transport the contraband.

A GRP official said the consignment was booked on the Delhi-Guwahati Awadh Express in New Delhi in a fictitious name and was supposed to be handed over to a party in the city.

The person who was carrying the consignment from New Delhi and was subsequently arrested has been identified as Sanjoy Singh, a resident of Katihar in Bihar.

“Based on intelligence inputs, we launched a drive to frisk all early morning trains and found the items in the Awadh-Assam Express around 6am. We are trying to identify the original sender of the contraband. The youth we have arrested has so far told us he was not aware of the items concealed inside the cartons. But interrogations are on. We have also asked railway officials to find out how the contraband was booked,” a GRP officer said.

Over the years, the GRP, customs and CID sleuths seized huge quantities of Phensedyl while being transported through Guwahati.