JAKARTA: A Singaporean man was arrested in northern Jakarta on July 17 after Indonesian authorities raided a house there that was used to produce etomidate vapes, also known as Kpods.
Local media outlet IDN Times identified the 34-year-old suspect with the initials LHM and the alias Hayden.
“We arrested a foreign national from Singapore and seized thousands of pieces of evidence during the operation,” Soekarno-Hatta International Airport Police Chief Senior Commissioner Wisnu Wardana was quoted as saying by state news agency Antara.
He added that the man was cooking or mixing the etomidate when airport police and customs agencies raided the house, reported local news outlet IDN Times.
Items that were seized in the raid included thousands of ready-for-distribution drug cartridges and mini laboratory equipment used to produce the etomidate.
Antara reported that the home-based operation had just begun producing the drug cartridges one day before the raid.
An investigation is under way to determine how many cartridges were produced and how long the operation had been running.
Wisnu said the suspect and the seized evidence have been transferred to the airport police for further investigation.
The house that was used in the drug production, located in the upscale Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) area, has also been sealed off.
The head of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport Police Narcotics Unit, Michael Kharisma Tandayu, said the house was rented by another Singaporean who had recruited the suspect to produce 500 etomidate vape catridges a day.
Michael said the suspect had arrived in Indonesia on July 13, reported IDN Times.
Wardana said the raid stemmed from an ongoing investigation into two bottles containing 2,200g of etomidate that had been smuggled from Malaysia and intercepted by airport customs.
The seized material was enough to produce up to 2,000 drug cartridges.
The police and customs authorities then launched a joint operation to dismantle the drug syndicate behind the smuggling, leading them to the house in PIK.
The Straits Times has contacted Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more details. - The Straits Times/ANN
