Crime pills

In the biggest ever multi-nation online pharmacy scandal busted recently by the US authorities, a little known run-of-the mill doctor from Agra has emerged as the astonishing kingpin. All of 59 and a son to aid him from the US, the man set up a parallel pharma economy in Agra, selling banned drugs in bulk to online pharma companies. Vijay Upadhyay brings you a case that has shocked even the otherwise deadpan DEA agents in the US

From online phishing rackets to data-thefts; from call-centre rackets to online pharmacies; from drug-trafficking to porn websites - Indian entrepreneurs seem to be excelling in every aspect of Internet crime, a fact that has dug deep furrows on the brow of US law makers who are the worst affected from this Indian "rule bending".

Over the past couple of years, the number of Indians involved in illegal trading through the internet has grown exponentially, with youngsters unable to physically go to America, being lured into earning dollars back home, by "slightly bending" rules, not knowing or caring for the fallout.
Nadeem Kashmiri, Siddhartha Subhash Mehta, Stephen Daniel, Dr. Brij Bhushan Bansal aka BBB, Ravi Raj, Sanjay Kedia... new names are added to this list every year by US authorities who either issue red corner notices against them through the Interpol or query Indian law enforcement authorities on the whereabouts of these people demanding an arrest and extradition.
The latest in this crime series came a couple of weeks back, when the Narcotics Control Bureau raided the offices of Kolkata-based software company Xponse Technologies and two call centres associated with it. Its chief executive Sanjay Kedia was arrested for illegally selling drugs through the Internet in association with his American associate Steven Mahana. Kedia used to earn over $50,000 a month selling psychotropic substances to customers in US, Canada and Sweden.
Although this is the first time that a fully functional IT company has been involved in illegal drug trade, it is definitely not the first time that the US DEA has warned the NCB of the huge volume of illegal sales of pharmaceutical products over the net from India.
A UNESCO report blames the open market policy being adopted by the Third world nations for the increased illegal drug sales. The DEA sources say, the first time DEA received a heads-up on India's inclusion in illegal Internet drug sales was in mid-2005 when Dr Brij Bhushan Bansal and his son Akhil were arrested in India and the US by the Organised Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force under Operation Cyber Chase. The operation ran globally, cracking down on 20 rogue Internet pharmacies illegally selling narcotic and psychotropic drugs through the net.
Though there have been other cases of illegal drug sales on the net, Bansal aka BBB stands out as the first man who used the net to establish a network of drug racketeers in 2004 when even DEA agents did not have net access on their desktops. He allegedly supplied over 11 million narcotic drug pills to people in the US, sitting in India in just a year, aided by his son Akhil who controlled the family's American operations.
This cyber drug peddler's story has all the masala of a Bollywood thriller, even involving the US Federal law enforcement agencies for the first time in a global operation that culminated in the arrests of 20 people in five nations, including India. The operations of the Bansal pharmacy boggled the minds of US agents who had staked out the house of BBB through a month with NCB agents, finally arresting him on April 19, 2005.
The story of this hi-tech crook's foray into cyber crime began in the 1990s when this 59-year-old respectable "army retired" doctor operating from a small clinic on Moti Lal Nehru Road of Agra began receiving prescription requests from his former patients in the US and Australia. These tourists had arrived in India at some point of time and having fallen sick in Agra come under the "kind-hearted" care of this doctor. Ever ready to help his patients, he filled out prescriptions for them and even couriered them the medicines, never realising that he was not licensed to practice outside India and the medicines he mailed were restricted drugs.
Somewhere during this period, he was contacted by a Canada-based NRI entrepreneur Jitendra Arora alias Jitu who gave Dr Bansal an insight into the growing business of online pharmacies and told him that he could mediate with them by providing them the drugs utilising his status as a practising doctor to procure a bulk drug seller licence.
In the following years, from a mere doctor in Agra, Bansal leapt into the big league of medicine business with his company Brij Enterprises buying and selling thousands of pills. From Codeine, Ketamine, Alprazolam, Clonazapam, Chlordiazepoxide, Dextropropoxyphene, Diazepam, Lorezepam, Modafinil, Nitrazepan, Pentazocine, Sibutramine hydrochloride, Zolpidem tartrate, Sildenafil citrate, Tadalafil, Vardenafil, Venlafaxine, Carisoprodol, Sertraline, Tramadol, Paroxetime to a lot of other controlled medicines not available for OTC sales under Schedule 'H' of the Indian Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940, he made big money selling them online.
Most of these drugs fall under the Schedule IV of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of the US making them highly controlled substances. Nonetheless, the cheap knockoff pills Dr Bansal purchased from generic drug manufacturers in Gujarat, Mumbai and Delhi found a burgeoning market in the US, giving him unprecedented financial muscle. His son Akhil basked in glory, getting the best in life - from a Korean Sedan for topping his graduation or for getting his room renovated for a whopping Rs 7 lakh, merely to persuade him to stay in India instead of going abroad for an MBA course after a procuring a medical degree from Gwalior.
Bansal's business was simple. He ran an apparently "legal" medicine export business from India, supplying numerous online Internet pharmacies with drugs prohibited for Over The Counter (OTC) sale in the United States without a valid prescription. These internet pharmacies are the same people who relentlessly flood every American internet user's mail boxes with spam, luring consumers with cheap Viagra, no-prescription Ambien, next-day codeine etc.
When Bansal's son finally went off to the US in 2003 to do an MBA at the Temple University in Philadelphia, Brij was livid and did not talk to his son for quite some time. But six months later, the father-son duo had agreed to give their illegal pill business a new life by Akhil handling the US affairs and Brij taking over the Indian side operations.
Akhil hatched the scheme in August 2003, when he persuaded ex-convict Richard Debney to open artefact business - Abbas Enterprise - as a cover to the online drug network.
Akhil's job was to post messages and bulletin board details about wonder drugs which were actually anti-depressants, sleeping pills and aphrodisiacs. He also sent e-mails to several websites to place orders with him or Abbas Enterprise.
By February 2004, the family's pill business grew beyond imagination, handling about two dozen online pharmacies at the same time and shipping in more than half a million assorted pills into the US every month. These were distributed to "rogue" online pharmacies through Bansal's storage depot located in Queens, NY.
In just a few months, the "Bansal Operation" as it was named by DEA operatives later on, was making millions of dollars in cheap generic drug sales in the US and in July 2004, came across the biggest client ever. This client from Costa Rica had indicated that he was interested in signing an exclusive deal for half a million pills a month and in an attempt to strike the deal, Akhil prepared a multimedia presentation on his laptop, revealing all the details of his family's operations in the US. The presentation made a solid case against Akhil and his father when the DEA agents finally caught up with him a year later.
By October 2004, DEA was on Akhil's trail who had entrusted his sister Julie Agarwal in Jaipur with sending spam emails. A video surveillance set up at Akhil's Roxborough apartment was enough to give the agents a taste of the most complicated illegal drug shipment case that they had ever witnessed so far.
Wiretaps placed on Akhil's phones established that Akhil was sourcing the pills from his father Brij Bhushan Bansal in India, a name that very soon moved to the top of the indiction table of the DEA. The sheer audacity of the father-son duo in maintaining a business link across telephone lines and emails shocked officials. Successive email taps proved that Akhil was just another operative in the business and the kingpin Brij Bhushan was in India where US authorities had absolutely no jurisdiction.
In was then that the DEA involved the NCB in the case, imparting information on a "need to know" basis. The NCB agreed to establish a stakeout at the Bansals' residence in the posh Kamla Nagar area of Agra where an ailing Brij Bhushan (had a heart condition), routinely spent hours on the phone talking to his son on following up with the pharmacies that were defaulting in making payments.
In March 2005, Brij Bhushan suffered from a mild heart attack which propelled Akhil into a coming to India and transferring all bank accounts. Back in the US, the DEA was closing in on the family's biggest client William Reed aka Millerlight in Virginia who bought and sold Ketamine, an illegal party drug in the US. Millerlight was arrested when he tried to recover a package of Ketamine that had just arrived for him at the post office. It was Millerlight who finally spilled the beans and told the US authorities that the drug operation was actually being run by a man he only knew as "Dr" and that he routinely communicated with him through email.
Taking advantage of the PATRIOT Act, the DEA tapped the email account of Millerlight, getting him to send an email to the Bansals acknowledging receipt of the package. They were delighted to see Brij Bhushan's emails sitting in his mailbox, enough evidence to incriminate the entire Bansal operation in the US, but not in India, where the DEA had to rely on the NCB to do the dirty work.
Akhil returned to the US soon afterwards only to sense that something had finally gone wrong and told his fiancée Foram Mankodi, a paediatrician, that he was thinking of quitting the business and turning over the operations to his sister in Jaipur. He planned to set up a medical transcription company instead, running it in India from the proceeds of the pills business while he moved his parents to the US, going legit to the root.
Little did he know that the trap had already been set by the DEA for a worldwide raid conducted on April 19 in the US and April 20 in India. While Akhil and his roommate Atul Patil were arrested in Philadelphia, Dr. Sanjeev Srivastava, David and Elizabeth Armstrong who ran the Bansals' operation were picked up from the New York shipping depot. Apart from them, about 10 website operators were also arrested in countries like Australia, the US, Canada, Romania and South Korea.
Brij Bhushan, his daughter Julie, son-in-law Yatindra, supplier Jaya Swami and shipping agent Praveen Dua were arrested in Agra, Jaipur, Mumbai and Delhi respectively, shutting down one of the biggest illegal drug marketing networks on the internet.
But the twist in the tale was yet to arrive. Akhil who had pleaded guilty to DEA, changed stance and claimed that his business was legal. He was, however, convicted by the jury with the sentence being up to 30 years in US prisons after which, he could be extradited to India.
Claiming innocence and furious over the gross "neglect of human rights" in the US, Akhil has pressed charges worth billions of US dollars against DEA agents who, according to him, illegally tapped his phones, misused the Patriot Act, misapplied the conspiracy law, lied, violated rules and unfairly made an example of him, when he was just helping his father run a "legitimate" business in the US.
Meanwhile, two years after the arrests in India, all members of the Bansal operation have been freed by courts on bail, except Brij Bhushan who has been granted bail from Delhi and Agra courts but is awaiting one from the Jaipur court. He maintains a high profile in the Agra district jail where he is one of the most "venerated" prisoners, both due to his age and his undiminished capacity to spend money in order to avail of luxuries.
Talking to Foray, NCB's standing counsel Sanjay Singh said the NCB had filed a complaint against Brij Bhushan and he could not evade a prison term for long. "The NCB will contest his bail plea in Jaipur. Bansal has links in Nepal where he maintained a clinic in the 1980s and he could escape to Nepal, once he is out on bail," he said.
When Foray contacted Brij Bhushan at the Agra district court where he had been brought for a hearing last week, he denied all charges. Displaying a copy of his drug licence, he claimed that he was running a valid bulk drug business in India and had been framed in the case by NCB. He insisted that he had never dealt in any narcotics and the medicines that he had exported all came under the Schedule 'H' of the Indian Drug and Cosmetics Act and he was authorized to sell these drugs. He claimed that he would be soon exonerated and then the NCB shall have to pay for the gross injustice.
But Brij Bhushan is in a long haul. The US authorities have demanded his extradition to the US, where he is facing charges of conspiracy to distribute and import a controlled substances, conducting a criminal enterprise and international money-laundering. If this master drug peddler does get off lightly in Indian courts, he would still not be free as under the extradition treaty between the US and India, extradition can be demanded for any offence punishable in both countries.
India cannot refuse extradition based on nationality concerns and when the US formally makes its request, it would have to comply. This means there's really no pill that Brij Bhushan can get for himself to be a free man in a long time.