The Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) latest bust will remind you of the American TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ (about the transformation of an everyday chemistry teacher into a meth-manufacturing criminal). A Bengaluru-based research scientist, working with a city subsidiary of a pharma major in Hyderabad, has emerged as one of the key players in a drug racket active across South India.A team of investigators from the NCB arrested the scientist, Venkat Rama Rao (35), along with his accomplice, Ravi Shankar Rao, and recovered 231 kg of amphetamine in Hyderabad. They also arrested his wife and seized 30 grams of amphetamine and Rs 1.23 crore cash from his rented accommodation in Electronics City in Bengaluru.The sleuths trapped him and his accomplice near Miyapur in Hyderabad while they were reportedly planning to head towards Bengaluru in a vehicle with amphetamine consignment late on Saturday night. The total worth of the seized consignment is expected to be over Rs 45 crore. The drug bust involved officials from the NCB units in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.“It seems they are part of a major racket that was invo­lved in the illegal storage and distribution of amphetamine, which is the base compound for making high-end hallucinogenic banned narco variants, including ecstasy and methamphetamine,” said an official involved in the operation.The arrested research scientist, Rao, has been residing in Bengaluru for the last couple of years with his wife at a rented house in Hebbagodi in Electronics City.He confessed to the officials that he was working at a reputed biotech company in KIADB industrial area in Electronics City.The firm also has a unit in Bollaram in Miyapur, which was the locality from where he was arrested along with his accomplice, identified as Ravi Shankar Rao. As per the initial probe, it seems the drug consignment was to be brought to Bengaluru and then trafficked to Chennai.“They were part of a gang that was illegally manufacturing amphetamine at a lab called Trident Lab near Miyapur. We have raided the premises and will be making more arrests in the coming days,” sources added.Initially, Venkat and Ravi Shankar were arrested with 221 kg of amphetamine in their vehicle on Saturday following which another 10 kg of the substance was recovered from Trident Lab premises in Hyderabad. His wife was arrested from the city while she was trying to move the cash and 30 gm of amphetamine from their home in the city.The investigators claimed the accused was in touch with some of the customers and their details are expected to emerge in the coming days. All of them have been booked under the provisions of the NDPS Act.Amphetamine is a neural stimulant which is used as an aphrodisiac and a euphoria-inducing drug. It is also the base compound for making other popular psychotropic party drugs such as ecstasy and meth crystals.Though amphetamine is used in very minute quantity in drugs used for treating narcolepsy and attention deficit disorder, in some countries such as India, it has been banned along with its derivatives like methylamphetamine and ecstasy under the NDPS Act 1985.POSSIBLE LINK?Amphetamine is manufactured primarily from ephedrine. A major racket, allegedly operated by former Bollywood actor Mamta Kulkarni’s husband Vicky Goswami, was busted in Mumbai in April in which huge consignments of ephedrine were being smuggled out of Avon Life Sciences in Solapur. Thane police had arrested a Bengaluru-based man Sushil.