Drugs Worth Rs 800 Crore Seized From Maharashtra, Gujarat (representational image)
The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) seized liquid drugs worth Rs 800 crore after conducting a raid at a manufacturing unit in Maharashtra’s Thane district on Wednesday.
A team of ATS officials seized the drugs after a raid at a mephedrone manufacturing unit after they were tipped off. A similar raid was conducted at a pharmaceutical factory in Gujarat’s Bharuch district where liquid Tramadol worth Rs 31 crore was recovered, said an official.
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As part of the two-day operation conducted on August 5 and 6, the ATS has arrested four people involved in the production and distribution of the narcotic drugs. The drugs are banned under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
Sunil Joshi, Deputy Inspector General of Police, ATS, said that their probe revealed that two brothers, who were arrested in the Maharashtra case, had rented a flat for nearly eight months to manufacture mephedrone using different chemicals. “Their earlier batch failed, but this batch was almost ready, and the process to produce the final product in powder form was on when the raid was conducted,” Joshi said.
The two brothers have been identified as Mohammad Yunus Shaikh (41) and his brother Mohammad Adil Shaikh (34).
The ATS received the information about the Thane factory after interrogating three people who were arrested, and drugs and raw material worth Rs 51.4 crore were seized from a mephedrone manufacturing unit in Palsana in Surat, Gujarat.
The agency also arrested two people during a raid at a pharmaceutical unit in an industrial area in Bharuch district where liquid Tramadol worth Rs 31 crore was seized, added Joshi. The arrested have been identified as Pankaj Rajput and Nikhil Kapuria.
While Rajput worked as a chief chemist at the factory, Kapuria served as the owner of a chemical trading company. According to Joshi, the two acquired the raw materials from an Ahmedabad-based company owned by Harshad Kukadiya. After preparing the liquid Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), the liquid would be sent to Kukadiya, who then sent it to a factory in Gandhinagar to prepare Tramadol tablets.
Lately, Tramadol has come to be known as a ‘fighter drug’ after it was reported that ISIS fighters consumed the drug to stay awake for long hours.
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Efforts to arrest others involved in the racket are underway, said Joshi.
The Customs department, on July 29, seized 68 lakh Tramadol tablets worth Rs 110 crore from two export containers at Mundra port in Gujarat’s Kutch district. The drugs were headed to countries like Sierra Leone and Niger.
