Police seize 2m Nipam pills

Police seize 2m Nipam pills

JAKARTA (JP): Police seized more than two million Nipam 10
pills, barbiturate-type drugs whose sale and production is
prohibited, in a raid on a drug packaging factory in West
Jakarta, the City Police spokesman said yesterday.

Lt. Col. E. Aritonang said a team of police detectives raided
a two-story house at Taman Kota Bloc C3/3. Kebon Jeruk, Thursday
morning and arrested 21 employees.

Police also confiscated machinery and equipment including two
pressing machines, 11 tablet molds, two cutting machines and a
gray Kijang van registration number B 1107 TM, Aritonang said
last night.

"The police are looking for factory's supplier, identified as
A Cek alias A Kiong. He is the main suspect as he also runs the
factory," he said, adding that 485,000 of the seized pills were
packed and ready for sale.

The government banned the production and sale of Nipam 10 in
the 1980s. Since then the pills have been popular with drug users
here.

Nipam is usually sold in a strip of 10 pills for around Rp
2,500.

Aritonang said the raid at A Kiong's rented house was not easy
because it was always locked from the inside. Police had closely
watched the house since Wednesday before conducting the raid at
9:00 a.m. Thursday, he said.

"Except for the supervisor, A Tet, 60, and the driver, no one
was allowed to leave the house. They worked, ate and slept in
that house," he said.

Almost all the employees, aged from 12 years old to 60 years
old, claimed they had worked at the factory for only three to
five days before Thursday's raid. They also said they were taken
to the factory by middle-men.

A Tet, claiming he had worked for only three days prior to the
bust, said he and the other employees packed at least 14,000
strips a day.

A Tet, now at police detention center for questioning, told
journalists yesterday that A Kiong had offered him the job at the
factory.

"I took the tablets from A Kiong's house near the Pluit Mega
Mall every morning, to the factory to be packed in the plastic
strips. At night, I took the ready for sale drugs back to Pluit,"
A Tet said.

The youngest employee, Lem, 12, said he and his three friends
were offered the job by a middleman who promised them work in a
plastics factory for a daily wage of Rp 6,000.

All 21 employees are now at City Police's detention center.
(04)