RAWALPINDI: The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) on Friday claimed to have arrested the alleged ringleader of drug suppliers to students of universities and elite class youth.

Brigadier Hammad Ahmed Dogar, the director of the ANF, said a large quantity of imported drugs was also recovered from the suspect.

Addressing a press conference at the ANF regional directorate in Humak Town, Brigadier Dogar said Waheed Ali, a resident of Dadu, worked as a government contractor before starting supplying drugs to university students.

He said the arrest of the alleged drug supplier came about after the ANF intelligence deployed special surveillance teams to unearth gangs involved in providing drugs to educational institutions, especially in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

He said Waheed was involved in supplying weed (marijuana) and LSD (imported drugs) stripes/blotters to the students.

The suspect was kept under surveillance for over three weeks and arrested along with 27 tokens of weed and 32 bottles of LSD, he added.

The foreign synthetic drugs were smuggled into the country through the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, another senior official of the ANF said.

He said the accused had been involved in drug supply for 18 months. First he supplied charas to construction workers and then turned to the imported synthetic drugs to supply them to university students.

“He also used to offer a free token of weed if a customer bought six tokens at a time,” the ANF official said, adding raids were underway to arrest the importer of the foreign drugs.

The ANF said it had conducted six operations and arrested 11 drug suppliers to some educational institutions during the last one month.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2017