Uttar Pradesh Police on Friday arrested Crime Branch Inspector Ramesh Singh Sindhu after he was allegedly caught red-handed while accepting a ₹4 lakh bribe. Officials also recovered the cash from his possession. The businessman who handed over the money, identified as Rahul, was also apprehended while attempting to flee.
The action was carried out by a team led by IPS officer Dhaval Jaiswal, acting on the instructions of Police Commissioner J Ravindra Gaur.
The bribery is linked to a November 3 seizure of cough syrup worth ₹3.5 crore, in which the inspector reportedly accepted the bribe to protect the accused involved in the case. Sindhu is a 2013-batch officer.
An SIT had earlier been formed to probe the illegal cough syrup racket, with Additional DCP Crime Piyush Singh overseeing the investigation. During this probe, the inspector was caught accepting the bribe.
DCP City Dhaval Jaiswal confirmed that a case under corruption charges is being registered against the arrested officer, and the person paying the bribe is also in police custody.
According to Ghaziabad Police, the case originated on October 18, when Sonbhadra Police intercepted two trucks carrying cough syrup. Interrogation revealed that large quantities were being stockpiled in Ghaziabad warehouses and distributed nationwide.
Following this, Commissioner Gaur assigned the investigation to Additional DCP Piyush Singh and Crime Branch in-charge Anil Rajput. On November 3, police raided a warehouse on Meerut Road and sealed four trucks.
A detailed search uncovered two 12-tyre trucks and two Eicher canters containing 1,57,350 bottles of Eskuf and Phensedyl cough syrup. This included 850 cartons of Eskuf and 300 cartons of Phensedyl, each bottle measuring 100 ml. The total quantity amounted to 15,735 litres, valued at more than ₹3.40 crore.
Police stated that the syrups contain codeine, a narcotic substance. The accused were trafficking these bottles to Bangladesh and other countries, where a bottle priced between ₹210 and ₹212 in India was sold for ₹600–₹1,000. In regions with alcohol bans, the syrup is often misused as an intoxicant.
Interrogation revealed that masterminds Saurabh Tyagi and Santosh Bhadana supplied cough syrup using more than 550 trucks over the past three years. Warehouse owners in Ghaziabad charged ₹20,000 per truck per day for storage.
Tyagi told police that the consignments were routed from Delhi through Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal before entering Bangladesh.
The central figure of the syndicate is Asif, a resident of Meerut, who allegedly operates the network from Dubai. He works alongside Waseem (also from Meerut) and Shubham Jaiswal from Varanasi. All three are currently on the run. With their support, Tyagi collected the cough syrup in the NCR for nationwide distribution.
The smuggled consignment recovered in the latest raid was intended to be transported from Ghaziabad to Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Bengal, eventually reaching Bangladesh.
Tyagi, who holds a valid license for RS Pharma, Indirapuram, allegedly purchased cough syrup using fake firms including Vanya Enterprises, Laborate Pharma (Paonta Sahib), and Abbott Pharma (Baddi).
The syrup was stored at a fish warehouse complex in Ghaziabad and later loaded onto trucks bound for Jharkhand, Bengal, and Assam. Traffickers frequently changed concealment techniques inside trucks to avoid detection.
Police continue to search for the remaining accused as the investigation widens into a major international narcotics trafficking racket.