A walk-on role or more? DMK faces heat over a drug bust and a movie producer on the run

A drug scandal, an absconding movie producer, and Tamil Nadu politics. With weeks to go for the Lok Sabha elections, the DMK has been put into an uncomfortable position over the alleged involvement of Chennai-based producer A K Jaffer Sadiq in an international drug smuggling ring, giving ammunition to Opposition parties AIADMK and the BJP to target the M K Stalin-led party.

On February 15, the Delhi Police and the Narcotics Bureau (NCB) raided a godown in west Delhi in a joint operation, acting on information that Australian and New Zealand authorities had provided almost four months ago. They allegedly found suspects trying to pack 50 kg of pseudoephedrine into fake packets of multigrain food mix, and claimed to have busted an international network involved in the smuggling of 3,500 kg of pseudoephedrine valued at over Rs 2,000 crore in the international market. Subsequently, the police arrested three people from Tamil Nadu — Chennai residents Mukesh and Mujibur Rahman, and Ashok Kumar of Villupuram. They allegedly named Sadiq.

Last week, the NCB team went to the producer’s home in Chennai and pasted the summons outside. With no response from the producer and his home locked, officials of the central agency went to his home on Wednesday evening with a search warrant and went inside. He is accused of being involved in the smuggling ring that was moving pseudoephedrine to Australia and New Zealand disguised as health-mix powder and desiccated coconut. On Thursday, the NCB conducted searches at an office that reportedly has links to a leader of the DMK’s Chennai West unit. The cameraman of a Tamil news channel who came to the office on getting to know of the raids was attacked by a group of men.

However, Sadiq himself has