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)