E-Paper
India to seek Bansal's extradition
Bansal was held last week in the US for running a multi-million dollar racket.
India will appeal to the US to extradite Akhil Bansal, who has been arrested for masterminding a multi-million dollar online drug racket.
"We are trying to get custody of Akhil. But as he was arrested there, the US authorities have the first right over him," Rajeev Walia, deputy director general of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), said on Monday.
Bansal was among 20 people arrested last week after the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and NCB, in a joint operation, busted a gang of e-traffickers that allegedly distributed medicines from India worth millions of dollars by using "rogue" Internet pharmacies.
The Philadelphia-based Akhil Bansal handled the US wing of the operation, spearheaded by his father Brij Bhushan Bansal in India.
Akhil Bansal hatched the scheme in August 2003, when he approached an ex-convict Richard Debney, who was also arrested by DEA. Debney was instructed to open an artifacts and knickknacks business - Abbas Enterprise - to cover up the online drug network.
Akhil's job was to post messages and bulletin board details about wonder drugs (actually anti-depressants, sleeping pills, aphrodisiacs). He also sent e-mails to several websites to place orders with him or Abbas Enterprise.
