Codeine syrup racket: Wanted accused, son held in city

Varanasi: Four days after forfeiting their property worth Rs 13.53 crore, police arrested a man and his son — carrying a combined bounty of Rs 50,000 —from the Ramnagar area in Varanasi late Thursday for illegal trafficking of codeine cough syrup.Manoj Yadav, owner of Syndicate Enterprises, and his son Lakshya were nabbed during a joint raid by Kotwali police and SIT at Tengra Mod. Manoj, a resident of Ausanganj in Jaitpura, and Shubham Jaiswal, the mastermind of codeine cough syrup smuggling, created fake e-way bills to sell syrup in Varanasi and eastern areas.
Manoj is named in the Kotwali case, and FIRs have been registered against him and his son at the Ramnagar police station. ACP (Kotwali) Vijay Pratap Singh said they are grilling the accused to uncover the cough syrup smuggling racket.Manoj invested the proceeds from the illegal buying and selling of cough syrup into his real estate company, MSS Infra. He is a director of LMS Infra Private Limited. During interrogation, Manoj revealed that he bought and sold lakhs of bottles of cough syrup from Shaily Traders, owned by Shubham's father Bhola. Properties worth over Rs 44 crore of Shubham's father, who is currently lodged in jail following his arrest from Kolkata airport in Nov 2025, and their close aide Manoj Yadav have already been forfeited.He said he met Shubham through the Saptasagar medicine market and goods were transported using fake bills and GST. On Tuesday, a team of Sonbhadra police forfeited Rs 4.5 crore worth of immovable assets in Varanasi, linked to a codeine cough syrup smuggling case. Sonbhadra police also displayed notices at the houses of Shubham and his two close aides, Nishant Kumar Gupta alias Ravi Gupta of Bhadohi and Vijay Gupta of Kabirchaura in Varanasi, asking them to appear before them to avoid forfeiture of their movable and immovable properties.The crackdown comes amid a wider probe by Uttar Pradesh authorities into the alleged illegal stocking and supply of the regulated codeine-based syrup within and outside the state, with officials estimating the illicit trade runs into hundreds of crores. Cough syrup containing codeine is used as an intoxicant and is in high demand in West Bengal and Bangladesh, making its smuggling highly profitable.