SEREMBAN: The police have uncovered a drug processing laboratory, believed to be the biggest they have seen in many years, at the Taman Oakland, Seremban 2 here yesterday.
HUGE SEIZURE: Othman (second right) shows reporters bags containing Eramin 5 weighing more than 318.4 kilograms.— Bernama photo
Gunny sacks of Eramine 5 pills weighing 318.4kg worth RM20 million were seized and three men nabbed, said Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigations Department deputy director 1, Datuk Othman Harun.
“Two men aged 23 and 40 picked at the lab housed at a shophouse in Taman Oakland at 10.45am by the Bukit Aman Narcotics CID team.One of them is a mechanical engineering graduate.”
“Simultaneously, their boss, who lives in Lukut, was also hauled up.The police sealed his properties worth about RM500,000,” Othman told a news conference here yesterday.
He said the arrests showed that locals were being recruited to produce psychotropic drugs as major drug lab busts before involved foreigners such as the Johor Baharu lab (2008) and Penang (2009) were operated by Taiwanese and Indonesians respectively.
He said “the involvement of locals in drug processing was associated to knowledge acquisition and procurements of ingredients and machines from the local market.We will investigate if this syndicate had links with pharmaceutical companies where they could have obtained the ingredients and machines for drug processing and pill packs,” he said.
He said drug syndicates were becoming desperate due to the difficulty of smuggling drugs into the country and had resorted to opening labs for the domestic market. — Bernama