Hyderabad: Doon School alumnus used 'Lunacy' to acquire drugs from Netherlands

More arrests were made by the Telangana Excise department in drugs haul case where school students were found to be clients

Dundu Anish, the 29-year-old aerospace engineer and former employee of NASA who was arrested as part of Hyderabad drug haul case took the 'Lunacy' route to access drugs. The Doon school alumnus was sent narcotics via courier and curiously, all the courier packages had Netherland markings.

Between May 17 and June 8 this year, Anish ordered drugs via darnet network 'Lunacy' at least eight times. The officials of the Telangana Prohibition and Excise department have traced his transaction in detail. Anish had ordered Ecstasy Pills- 5 (Green Ecstasy), MDMA -2 grms, LSD-10 papers, Cocaine- 2 grms, Ecstasy Pills-100 (Pink), Cocaine-6grms, Pills-50(green) between May and June using dark websites. All of these were narcotic and psychotropic substances.

On the basis of Anish's statement, officials arrested a steel businessman, Ritul Agrawal all of 26 years of age. He, just like most others arrested in the case, holds a BBA degree from ICFAI business School. The modus operandi was the same. Order the drugs online undetected and pay using bitcoins or cryptocurrency. What is bothering the investigating officials currently is the description of the courier that delivered the drugs. According to the duo, the packaging contained Netherland markings.

After the first few arrests in the case, the Excise Department officials suspected the involvement of a person from Chicago in supplying the drugs to peddlers. With the latest arrests, the courier from Netherland has sprung a surprise.

Why peddlers, dealers and addicts are hooked to darknet

Most communication, the transaction is untraceable when a user chooses to access the darknet. Lunacy is one such website. "Darknet is used to deal with a repressive government and if you want to hide your identity. Take for example Tor, anyone can access it but it is not present on Google. While accessing Tor you can have a website or network only inside the Tor network. It is not accessible from the regular internet. .onion is used just like .com and .co.in is used in regular websites," said Kiran Jonnalagadda, the founder of Hasgeek.

Over the years multiple dark websites have come up and it is almost impossible to find out who is running the website unless it is mentioned it on the website itself. With no name or way to trace the user, it becomes hard for law enforcement agencies to figure out who is running the website and who is using it.

"Agencies can't track anyone unless people put out their details like phone numbers or name. If you are getting drugs then you have to exchange contact information because somebody is got to contact you some way to pick up your consignment. There have been arrests in the past because people who put out information did so carelessly," Kiran added.

Most transactions that take place on the darknet are via bitcoins or crypto coins. Currently, one bitcoin is worth Rs 1,53,381.18. Bitcoins are preferred since they help protect identity but make transactions public. Under the protection of anonymity of the dark web, drug peddlers, pushers and clients attept to hoodwink law enforcement agencies.

OneIndia News