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Time of India
06-07-2025
- Time of India
How a Digital Drug Dealer Went About Biz Quietly with a Postal Plan
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Popular in Epaper Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Edison Babu 's neighbours in Muvattupuzha knew him as the quiet engineer who had returned home during the pandemic. The 35-year-old former auto industry professional seemed to lead an unremarkable life in this sleepy Kerala suburb, occasionally visiting the local post office with packages: nothing unusual for someone running what appeared to be a small online they didn't know was that their mild-mannered neighbour had built India's most sophisticated darknet drug empire, one that relied heavily on the very government postal service that was meant to serve the community. In a massive operation codenamed 'MELON' last week, the Narcotics Control Bureau NCB ) arrested Babu, revealing him as the mastermind behind 'Ketamelon', India's only level-4 darknet vendor — a top-tier status that made him the country's digital drug case exposes a striking paradox: the same government infrastructure built to connect citizens and deliver legitimate goods has become the primary highway for India's most prolific online drug dealers. Authorities seized 1,127 LSD blots, 131.66 grams of ketamine and ₹70 lakh worth of cryptocurrency from Babu's operation, which had distributed over 600 drug shipments across India in just 18 modern darknet drug trade operates like a twisted version of legitimate ecommerce, complete with customer service ratings, bulk discounts and next-day 'Ketamelon' operation exemplified this new breed of digital drug dealing, where vendors are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars based on their potency of drugs sold and customer service — with level-4 status representing the criminal equivalent of Amazon sourced large quantities of synthetic drugs through international vendors, primarily from UK-based supplier 'Gunga Din', believed to be linked to the notorious global LSD cartel 'Dr Seuss'— reputedly the world's largest LSD distributor. Once the drugs arrived through international couriers at places like Kochi Foreign Post Office, Babu would repackage them into smaller quantities and dispatch them across India using the country's postal technical sophistication was impressive. During raids, authorities confiscated a pen drive containing TAILS OS, an operating system maintaining privacy and anonymity while browsing the internet, along with multiple cryptocurrency wallets, hard disks with incriminating documents and a hardware were all Babu needed to build his multi-million marketplace of drugs on the darknet. The darknet, despite its ominous name, is simply the regular internet accessed through browsers like Tor that mask users' identities. No special skills or underground connections are required for this. Anyone can download Tor browser and access these hidden marketplaces in minutes, making the barrier to entry surprisingly low for both buyers and flowed through cryptocurrency channels, with Monero serving as the new cash of the digital drug economy. Other popular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin don't directly reveal the user's real-world identity but, with enough information, it's possible to link transactions back to a person. Meanwhile, Monero is designed to obscure transaction details like sender, receiver and transaction amounts. Think of bitcoin like a 10-year old note on the back of which everyone who owned it previously is marked. In contrast, every unit of Monero is indistinguishable from every other unit. Every time you spend a Monero, there are other decoys being spent, and all you know is that you are one of the many who spent the money. The receiver's Monero account does not appear on the blockchain; a one-time-use address is what gets put on the blockchain, so the receiver's anonymity is also protected. The amount that gets sent is also confidential. The end result is that Monero coins have no memory, the polar opposite of fiat the digital trade offers near-perfect anonymity to both sellers and buyers, the NCB has learned to exploit the inevitable friction points where the virtual world meets physical reality. 'Though you are present in the darknet and do all your activities, you will have a bank account which is linked to your crypto account. So the traces are always present in the surface world,' said a senior NCB official. The agency can track packages to their sources, though with limited success so far, but has discovered that these tech-savvy dealers eventually must interface with the outside world — whether for collecting money or arranging to the official, the typical journey of these vendors follows a predictable pattern: 'Most of these people who become vendors in the darknet are those who start their life as crypto traders. They pass out of college, start doing crypto trading, see some quick money, make some losses. Then probably they are a little bit addicted to drugs. Then they think, okay, better than crypto.' The official noted that most vendors are also users, with 'addiction always there. At least they used to take hydro weed or something'. While Kerala typically sees under 1,000 LSD blotters seized annually, Edison alone was allegedly selling close to 10,000 each month — each priced between ₹2,500 and ₹4,000, generating substantial monthly revenues that flowed seamlessly through cryptocurrency arrest represents the culmination of a three-year crackdown that has systematically dismantled India's major darknet operations, each with names that sound more like tech startups than criminal enterprises. The pattern reveals both the scope of the problem and the peculiar creativity of digital drug 2023, the NCB struck twice, taking down 'Rambada cartel' and 'Tile shop'— two separate vendor operations that had established significant customer bases across Indian cities. The cases followed similar patterns: tech-savvy operators using cryptocurrency, sourcing from international suppliers and distributing through postal 2024, NCB brought down the operator behind 'Hare Krishna', a vendor whose religious-sounding moniker masked a sophisticated distribution network. A separate case in Salem that year netted another major operator, bringing the total to four major busts in three to the senior NCB official, that criminals needed such attractive names to draw customers itself shows how competitive the darknet marketplace has become. The NCB's success in these cases stems partly from their technical evidence gathering. As the official explained, 'The technical evidence which we had been able to gather and put on record before the court is very strong. This is the reason why, though the period of incarceration is more than a year, none of them have been able to come out on bail.' The geographic pattern is telling: operations span from Kerala to Gurgaon, with 'Kerala, Bengaluru and Gurgaon becoming hotspots where these people get into crypto trading and also get lured into darknet and drug markets'. The common thread is India's IT-enabled services hubs, where 'the number of people who are having crypto accounts and crypto wallets will be very high'.Most arrests follow a similar investigative trail: months of surveillance, intercepted packages and raids that uncover sophisticated digital infrastructures. In the earlier 'Zambada' case — named after a Mexican cartel — the NCB arrested 14 people and seized 29,013 LSD blots, 472 grams of MDMA and ₹51.38 lakh in cash, revealing the scale these operations can of the most striking aspects of India's darknet drug trade isn't its digital sophistication — it's its reliance on decidedly analogue government infrastructure. India Post, the country's sprawling postal network designed to connect remote villages with urban centres, has inadvertently become the logistics backbone for illegal drug vulnerability is both systemic and shocking. As the senior NCB official bluntly acknowledged: 'The major cause of concern is the parcels which are going inside India. So once the contraband somehow enters into India, there is virtually no SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) in place for these courier and post office persons to do any scan or KYC check. Say, for example, a person is sending a parcel from Kochi to Delhi, absolutely, he can send anything. He can also send a pistol.'This creates an absurd theatre where the same postal workers who deliver government benefits like pensions, family letters and legitimate ecommerce packages also unknowingly ferry illegal drugs across the country. Babu made his twice-weekly trips to the Muvattupuzha post office like any small business owner, his packages blending seamlessly with legitimate commerce. The NCB has attempted to address this through regular meetings with India Post and private courier services, emphasising enforcement of KYC of the persons who come to book the parcels and CCTV cameras at the place where the person hand over the parcel. They've also pushed for Aadhaar-based verification after discovering 'multiple cases where fake Aadhaar details are being submitted'.Beyond these conventional measures, the agency has developed sophisticated pattern recognition tactics. Investigators now flag neighbourhoods where 'only a few houses or shops receive foreign shipments while larger neighbourhoods receive no such shipments'— an anomaly that often signals drug trafficking operations. The NCB is essentially laying digital nets at the interface points where virtual crime meets physical financial trail offers another avenue for detection. When crypto dealers convert their digital earnings to traditional bank accounts, these transactions can trigger suspicious transaction alerts. 'There's a suspicious transaction alerts that is always there, which is already being given by banks to the income tax department,' noted the senior official, though he acknowledged that 'the number of STRs (suspicious transaction reports) is also very high,' making it challenging to separate legitimate crypto trading from criminal proceeds. But the fundamental postal problem remains unchanged. When asked directly about existing checks and balances, the senior official was refreshingly candid: 'There's no checks and balances to prevent it.'
Boston Globe
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Does ‘Dept. Q' look familiar? There may be some reasons for that.
Morck, in his combination of expertise and disagreeableness, is a law-enforcement version of Hugh Laurie's physician title character in 'House.' When Morck's ordered to attend therapy sessions (Kelly Macdonald plays the therapist), it's hard not to think of Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi. A group of law-enforcement misfits banished to a crummy, out-of-the-way space? Yes, 'The Wire.' The bunker-like chamber where a major character is held captive feels very 'Lost.' The extremely creepy vibe when Morck and Akram, his partner, finally discover what they, well, discover recalls the similar extremely creepy vibe when police partners Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson make their own discovery in the last episode of the first season of 'True Detective.' The list goes on, without quite extending to ' Advertisement Oh, and taking things beyond the small screen, the business of a politely noble person of color (Akram is a Syrian refugee) putting up with his initially dismissive-bordering-on-abusive white-guy boss and frequently saving the day has myriad antecedents, reaching back to 'Gunga Din' Advertisement From left: Mark Stanley, Owen Cooper, and Stephen Graham in "Adolescence." Uncredited/Associated Press Of course sometimes the pas de deux between novelty and familiarity becomes a solo, with one of the partners sitting out the dance. There are many reasons why ' Mark Feeney is a Globe arts writer . Mark Feeney can be reached at
Hindustan Times
02-07-2025
- Hindustan Times
NCB busts ‘Ketamelon' darknet drug syndicate, 2 held in raids
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has busted India's most-prolific drugs syndicate being operated on darknet under the name of 'Ketamelon', and arrested two accused, including a Kochi resident who was running the network on dark web, officials said on Tuesday. Officials said they have recovered 1,127 LSD blots, 131.66 grams of ketamine contraband, and digital assets worth around ₹ 70 lakh. (HT PHOTO) Though the agency did not divulge the identity of the two accused citing ongoing raids across different states, officials said they have recovered 1,127 LSD blots, 131.66 grams of ketamine contraband, and digital assets worth around ₹ 70 lakh. Ketamelon, according to NCB officials, was the country's only Level-4 darknet vendor—a top-tier status in India—operating actively over the past two years on the darknet. 'The name derives from the vendor's (arrested accused) early involvement in Ketamine smuggling. Drugs were primarily sourced from a UK-based vendor Gunga Din, a known reshipper of the globally infamous Dr Seuss (also known as DS or Tribe Seuss), believed to be the largest LSD source in the world,' Neeraj Gupta, deputy director general of NCB, said. The LSD blots (a small piece of absorbent paper impregnated with lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD) seized by NCB sleuths bore the imprint Gunga Din and Rudyard Kipling. Gunga Din is a famous 1890 poem by Kipling. In recent years, NCB officials have observed that each consignment of LSD — a psychedelic drug — bears the imprint (name or symbol) of the main supplier. In the present case, Gupta said that once the orders were received on darknet, the LSD blots were sent to buyers through couriers. Probe so far has revealed that the accused had sold the LSD blots to buyers in Bengaluru, Chennai, Bhopal, Patna, Delhi, as well as regions in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. 'Over the last 14 months, 600 shipments were delivered. The estimated street value of the seized drugs is approximately ₹ 35.12 lakh, with LSD blots priced at ₹ 2,500- ₹ 4,000 each,' the officer added. The federal agency said that following a specific intelligence, its officials from the Cochin zone on June 28 intercepted three postal parcels in Kochi, carrying 280 LSD blots. The probe revealed the identity of the Ketamelon darknet operator, whose house was raided the following day, during which NCB officials found 847 more LSD blots and 131.66 grams of Ketamine, the agency added. LSD — also commonly known as acid, blots, and stamps — is a potent hallucinogenic drug, without any colour, taste or smell. It is painted or dipped into stamps and licked or swallowed by users. In 2023, NCB busted the then biggest darknet-based LSD cartel named 'Zambada', and seized 29,013 blots, 472 grams of MDMA and ₹ 51.38 lakh in cash and arrested 14 people in different operations.
Time of India
01-07-2025
- Time of India
NCB op in Kochi busts India's top darknet drug syndicate
Kochi: The narcotics control bureau's (NCB) Cochin zonal unit has successfully disrupted one of India's leading darknet drug operations known as 'Ketamelon'. The operation, named 'MELON', led to the confiscation of 1,127 LSD blots, 131.66g of Ketamine alongside cryptocurrency assets valued at Rs 70 lakh. Following extensive surveillance, on June 28, authorities seized 280 LSD blots from postal parcels in Kochi. Subsequent searches revealed 847 additional LSD blots, Ketamine, darknet access equipment including a TAILS operating system, and various cryptocurrency wallets containing approximately Rs 70 lakh in USDT. "Investigations revealed that 'Ketamelon' was India's only Level 4 darknet vendor — a top-tier status in India — operating actively over the past two years. The name derives from the vendor's early involvement in Ketamine smuggling. Drugs were primarily sourced from a UK-based vendor Gunga Din, a known reshipper of the globally infamous Dr Seuss (also known as DS or Tribe Seuss), believed to be the largest LSD source in the world," read the statement issued by NCB. The operation's distribution network extended across India, delivering LSD to Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Bhopal, Patna and regions in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Officials estimate over 600 deliveries happened in 14 months. The seized LSD's street value exceeds Rs 35 lakh, with individual blots selling between Rs 2,500 and Rs 4,000. This operation follows NCB's previous success against the 'Zambada' cartel in 2023, which yielded 29,000 LSD blots and Rs 51 lakh in currency. The current investigation continues with suspects in custody, whilst authorities trace cryptocurrency holdings on platforms like Binance. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Doctor's Day 2025 , messages and quotes!
Epoch Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
Voices From the Graveyard: Rudyard Kipling's ‘Epitaphs of the War'
During World War I, more than 880,000 men fighting for Great Britain died, One of those who fell in this bloodbath of a war was John Kipling (1897–1915), the only son of writer and poet Rudyard Kipling and his American-born wife, Caroline Balestier. After both the Army and the Navy rejected John's attempts to enlist for reasons of shortsightedness, Kipling used his influence to place his son in the Army, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Irish Guards. In 1915, just after his 18th birthday, John died in the Battle of Loos in France. Though they conducted an extensive investigation, Kipling and his wife never located their son's body. Later, historians identified what they now believe to be his gravesite, though this issue remains a matter of debate. An ardent supporter of the Empire and the British military, the post-war Kipling was understandably more filled with grief than patriotism. 'As a public man, he became much more angry and bitter,' Portrait of Rudyard Kipling from the biography "Rudyard Kipling," 1895, by John Palmer. Public Domain Tombstone Verse From a Complicated Man During his lifetime and afterward, Rudyard Kipling's novels, stories, and verse have attracted both garlands and brickbats from critics. Though both sides generally recognize his command of the English language, his attackers have labeled him an imperialist, a jingoist, and a racist. These tags can easily be tailored to fit the poet. ' Unfortunately for his detractors, Kipling and his works are a jumble of contradictions. The imperialist penned 'The Man Who Would Be King,' which contains criticisms of the British Empire; the jingoist wrote 'Recessional,' a rebuke to boasting and chauvinistic flag-waving; the racist composed 'Gunga Din,' the poem about the Indian bhisti (water-carrier) who died a hero while saving the life of a British soldier and so won these words as his garland of honor: 'You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!' Related Stories 8/31/2022 9/8/2021 A similar contradiction occurs with 'Epitaphs of the War.' Kipling was an early and ardent supporter of the war against Germany. He helped popularize the use of 'Hun' to describe the Germans in his poem ' A 1915 photograph of John Kipling, from the Rudyard Kipling papers, University of Sussex Library, England. Public Domain The Boys of War Here, for instance, are two voices: one belonging to a parent, the other to a dead son. Whether Kipling intended these as personal reflections on John's death will always be subject to debate. Surely the father who dearly loved his son and spent so much time trying to learn more about his final hours and the location of his body was at least thinking of John when he composed these two epitaphs: My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few. I have slain none except my Mother. She (Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me. In several of these verses, Kipling reminds readers that many of the dead, like his own son, were just steps away from childhood. In ' On the first hour of my first day In the front trench I fell. (Children in boxes at a play Stand up to watch it well.) In ' Laughing through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed, Cities and men he smote from overhead. His deaths delivered, he returned to play Childlike, with childish things now put away. A file photo of a WWI-era plane. Shutterstock Misfits In this cemetery of sorrows, Kipling also made room for those who didn't fit into this world of artillery, guns, and gas. These people were separated by culture or temperament from the ravenous machine of battle and death that was WWI. Here were two who lost their lives to bullets fired by their comrades: I could not look on death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone. Faithless the watch that I kept; now I have none to keep. I was slain because I slept; now I am slain I sleep. Let no man reproach me again, whatever watch is unkept— I sleep because I am slain. They slew me because I slept. Outlanders Other troops from the Empire fought and died in this conflict. In ' Prometheus brought down fire to men. This brought up water. The Gods are jealous—now, as then, Giving no quarter. Nor did the man who had spent so many years of his early life in India forget their troops who died on the Western Front: The man in his own country prayed we know not to what Powers. We pray Them to reward him for his bravery in ours. A Vanishing of Differences Class prejudices in Great Britain were still sharply practiced before the war, but as Kipling noted in ' A. 'I was a Have.' B. 'I was a 'have-not.'' (Together.) 'What hast thou given which I gave not.' Some British officers brought a servant from home to the Western Front, termed a 'batman' from the game of cricket. Often the relationship between the two became stronger during this time of duress. In many cases, it blossomed into true appreciation and even allowed the officer to better lead the men in his command. We learn of this arrangement in ' We were together since the War began. He was my servant—and the better man. Relevance The epitaphs of these combatants remind us of the costs of war. Two other poems Kipling included point to one of the perennial reasons for these wars and the accompanying suffering. Here is Kipling giving voice to ' I could not dig; I dared not rob; Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young? One of the better-known inscriptions in this graveyard is ' If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. In the excellent notes and commentary on 'Epitaphs of the War' A cemetery employee walks between graves of American servicemen killed during WWI ahead of celebrations of the WWI centenary at the American Cemetery in Suresnes, on the outskirts of Paris, France, on Nov. 9, 2018. Vadim Ghirda/AP Kipling published 'Epitaphs of the War' in 1919. By then, the appalling casualty lists of the dead, wounded, and missing were known. Some called the Great War 'the war to end all wars.' They couldn't foresee what lay ahead: another world war, a multitude of lesser wars, and a century of communism, fascism, and the collapse of empires. Kipling laments the personal costs of war. His 'Epitaphs' should act as a warning to all those who call for bombs and bullets instead of searching out every available option for peace. What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to
