The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has continued it’s campaign against the menace of drugs and seized liquid drug worth Rs.800 crore from Bhivandi in Maharashtra. The police arrested two brothers, Mohammad Yunus Shaikh (41) and Mohammad Adil Shaikh (34), from a manufacturing unit. They were involved in making mephedrone, a narcotic substance which is banned under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The raid at Bhivandi is linked with the ATS raid at a manufacturing unit in Palsana area of Surat on July 18, where drugs and raw material worth Rs. 51.4 crore were sized. Police had arrested three persons who revealed the trail to the police implicating Shaikh brothers.
The police acted upon the received inputs and raided a rented apartment in Bhivandi in Maharashtra. The police held two brothers with 800 kilograms of mephedrone in liquid form worth Rs. 800 crore in the international market. The Deputy Inspector General of Police, ATS said that those arrested were involved in the production and sale of these drugs.
The two brothers were manufacturing the MD drug ( as mephedrone is popularly known) in the apartment they rented eight months ago. They were apprehended just before their latest batch of production, was ready. The final process of making the substance in powder form before dispatch was ongoing. Police found out that their earlier attempt to manufacture had failed.
In another operation, there was a raid at a pharmaceutical factory in Bharuch district of Gujarat also where liquid Tramadol worth Rs. 31 crore was recovered. Tramadol, an opioid pain medication, is notified as a psychotropic substance under the NDPS Act in 2018 and its export is restricted.
As late as July 29, the Customs department had seized 68 lakh Tramadol tablets worth Rs. 110 crore at Mundra port in Gujarat. The containers were destined for the West African countries of Sierra Leone and Niger.
