Ashok, a milkman in Greater Noida’s Omicron-1 area, was taken aback to hear a Nigerian welcome him with “Ram Ram.” The news on Thursday that the Nigerian was operating a drug factory out of a recently built, one-story rental home directly in front of his dairy shocked him even more.
There are no occupied homes close to the home where the four foreigners are reportedly running a meth lab for the past two weeks, despite it being located in a sparsely populated area (above).
The house where the four foreigners are allegedly running a meth lab for the past two weeks is located in a sparsely inhabited area with no other occupied houses nearby. According to investigations, one house adjacent to it is still under construction, and there is an empty property on the other side.
The sole activity close to the house is the operation of a dairy farm on a 370-meter plot a few plots away. The dairy’s owner, Ashok, claimed that he only noticed foreigners strolling down the street in the nights.
While none of them said much, one of them seemed amiable and would frequently say “Ram Ram” to me. Ashok, a resident of Mathurapur village across the sector, stated, “I was quite surprised to see a foreigner greeting me this way, but I assumed he must have been in India for a long time.”
Another resident named Ghaniram claims that the meth lab was operating out of a freshly painted four-bedroom house that had previously been occupied by a Bihari family.
“The house’s construction was finished only six months ago, when it was listed for rent. After being there for nearly four months, a family from Bihar moved out. This kind of residence usually rents for between ₹20,000 and ₹25,000 per month. It was just earlier this month that the foreigners moved in, he claimed.
Police detectives stated that a pattern has evolved from the kinds of locations selected by suspected drug manufacturers, and this is the third such bust of a meth lab.
The first bust in Theta-2 was sprinting out of a three-story apartment complex. There wasn’t a single occupied residence close to that one either. It was the second residence in the Mitra Enclave, close to the Omega-1 sector. Although there were some additional people living in that area, there were no occupied homes close to the foreigners’ rental home, according to Yatendra Kumar, the leader of the SWAT (special weapons and tactics) squad that conducted the operation.
Greater Noida includes several isolated and poorly populated areas, according to SM Khan, deputy commissioner of police for the city.
In the most recent instance, he continued, police awareness was what resulted in the arrest.
“This meth lab was only getting set up, unlike the others that had been operating for more than a year. This is because police are on guard, especially in such remote residential areas, and we have stepped up our physical and technological surveillance, according to Khan.