Four held as cops bust gang using social media for drug sales

Four members of a narcotics supply gang operating in Defence Housing Authority and Clifton were arrested in raids carried out by the District South police on Monday.

The drug dealers used social media applications including WhatsApp and Facebook for their transactions and their customer base largely comprised youngsters of the high-income localities, said Javed Akbar Riaz, the senior superintendent of police for District South who supervised the raids. 

The officer said teams had been tasked with the investigation after multiple complaints and reports were received regarding the gang’s activities in DHA and Clifton. The investigators soon found out about the gang’s use of Facebook and WhatsApp for communication with customers. Posing as potential buyers, the cops then approached the dealers on the social media platforms and tracked their location.

A raid was carried out on Monday with a team of the Darakhshan police at a location on Street 14, Khayaban-e-Shamsheer, Phase V, DHA. The team encountered resistance from the suspects but eventually managed to apprehend two men – identified as Ahsan Abbas alias Bilal Shaikh and Taha Kamil – and seized a sizeable quantity of hashish.

Interrogation revealed that Ahsan was heading the entire operation and the gang consisted in total of eight members. Acting on information gleaned from the suspects, the police carried out another raid in DHA in which two more gang members, Ashraf Yaseen and Tabassum Hashim, were arrested with more narcotics.

As per SSP Riaz, the gang’s modus operandi was based on establishing friendly associations with susceptible youngsters. “They [the gang members] would frequent parties and other social gatherings to befriend people. At first, they would offer drugs such as ICE, cocaine and hashish for free.

They would wait for the person to develop a dependence on the substance and became a habitual user and then start extorting large sums of money from him or her,” said the officer. He confirmed the extensive use of social media platforms for transactions and said the gang members provided customers links to their accounts for communication. “They were supplying narcotics all over DHA and Clifton. As for the source of the narcotics, we have found out that they were buying the drugs from an area near Shahrah-e-Noor Jehan,” said SSP Riaz, adding that special police teams were in the hunt for the remaining gang members and their suppliers.