‘Yeh constable ka ghar hai?’: UP ex-cop's fancy Lucknow home draws shock & awe amid ED raids on cough syrup racket

IN a caseful of illegal merchandise of coughing sirup for do drugs abuse, a raid at dismissed Uttar Pradesh police constable Alok Pratap Singh's Lucknow home drew shock and awe online, as comments piled up over the size and overt opulence of the bungalow. “If this is the home of a constable, imagine…” commented a user on X under a video posted by news agency ANI.The in-hand salary of a police constable in UP is about ₹40,000 a month, another noted, wondering how such a big house in state capital Lucknow was possible without apparent “dirty money”.Several social media users posted videos purportedly of Alok Pratap's house.The raid was part of action across three states. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided 25 locations simultaneously across six cities in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Gujarat on Friday morning in connection with a major illegal network dealing in codeine-based cough syrup, officials said. These syrups are supposed to be sold only on a doctor's prescription as they are abused by drug addicts.In Lucknow, raids were conducted at five locations, including the residences of the dismissed cop Alok Pratap Singh, Jaunpur businessman Amit Kumar Singh, alias Amit Tata, and three others.“At around 7:30 am, a team of nearly 20 ED officials arrived at Alok Pratap Singh’s bungalow in Swastik City on Sultanpur Road. Investigators seized multiple documents, three mobile phones and several files relevant to the probe,” an officer told HT.How UP cough syrup racket came to lightThe racket, proceeds of which are estimated up to ₹1,000 crore over years, first came to light in February 2024, after a large consignment of illicit Phensedyl cough syrup was seized in the Sushant Golf City area of Lucknow. Subsequent investigations by the UP Special Task Force (STF) led to a chain of arrests.The ED registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on December 1 and began tracing financial links.For the past five days, the ED had been scrutinising details of more than 80 firms allegedly linked to over 20 accused. A total of 32 persons have been taken into custody by the state police, officials said, as per news agency PTI.UP Director General of Police (DGP) Rajiv Krishna had told reporters early this week that the investigation so far had exposed a network of major "super stockists" allegedly involved in illegal diversion of the "highly regulated" syrups. This category of cough syrup is a Schedule H drug and can only be sold on a doctor's prescription. But these are commonly abused as an intoxicant and one of them, named Phensedyl, is smuggled to Bangladesh in large quantities through the border.