The Allahabad High Court on Friday delivered a significant blow to the accused in a sprawling interstate codeine-based cough syrup racket. The court dismissed a batch of writ petitions filed by 23 individuals, including alleged kingpin Shubham Jaiswal from Varanasi, who were seeking protection from arrest and the quashing of FIRs registered against them.
Court Cites Enormity of the Racket
A bench comprising Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Achal Sachdev refused to grant any relief to the petitioners. The judges emphasized that the sheer scale of the operation necessitated a thorough investigation. They pointed to the massive quantity of contraband recovered as evidence of the racket's magnitude.
Appearing for the Uttar Pradesh government, Additional Advocate General Anoop Trivedi informed the court that in Varanasi district alone, authorities had seized over 2.23 crore bottles of codeine-based cough syrup. This staggering figure underscored the extensive reach of the illegal network.
Modus Operandi and Legal Stand
The court detailed the sophisticated methods used to disguise the illicit trade. It was revealed that the accused transported large consignments of Phensedyl cough syrup from Jharkhand to Uttar Pradesh using e-way bills falsely categorized for carrying snacks and namkeen, not pharmaceuticals.
Further, the operatives hid the medicine bottles in grain sacks and utilized forged identities to avoid detection. The bench explicitly stated that such clandestine activities could not be construed as dealing in drugs for legitimate medical or scientific purposes. Consequently, the protection potentially available under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act was deemed inapplicable, paving the way for the stricter provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act to take effect.
Investigation to Proceed Unhindered
In its ruling, the High Court relied on a recent Supreme Court judgment in the case of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence vs. Raj Kumar Arora & Ors (2025). The bench observed that the contents of the FIR clearly indicated the enormous misuse of codeine-containing Phensedyl. Therefore, the investigation must proceed under the NDPS Act and other relevant sections.
With the court declining to intervene at this stage, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the UP government is set to continue its probe unimpeded. The investigation, spanning multiple districts including Varanasi, aims to unravel the entire network of major "super-stockists" allegedly orchestrating the illegal storage and distribution of the addictive syrup.
The dismissal of these petitions marks a crucial step forward for the multi-agency investigation into one of the state's most significant drug rackets, ensuring that the legal process will move forward without obstruction.
