THIRTEEN people were arrested after the seizure of mephedrone valued at Rs 2.3 billion (£22 million) following raids at four drug manufacturing units in Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan states, an official said.
The raids were jointly conducted by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and Narcotics Control Bureau on Friday (26) following a tip-off that Ahmedabad resident Manoharlal Enani and Kuldeepsinh Rajpurohit of Rajasthan had set up mephedrone manufacturing units, the official added.
A watch was kept on the movements of Enani and Rajpurohit as well as their accomplices, following which the raids were conducted at the units in Sirohi and Jodhpur in Rajasthan and Piplaj village in Gandhinagar and Bhaktinagar industrial area of Amreli district in Gujarat, an ATS release said.
"The ATS recovered 22.028 kilograms of mephedrone (in solid form) and 124 kilograms of liquid mephedrone. Rajpurohit was nabbed during the raid in Gandhinagar and Enani was held from Sirohi," it said.
As per the probe, Enani was in jail for seven years after he was nabbed by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in 2015 for his involvement in the production of mephedrone at an industrial unit in Rajasthan.
All the accused were inter-connected and procuring the raw material from a company at Vapi industrial area in Valsad district, the release said.
"Investigations are on to find out since when they have been producing the drug, whether they sold it in the past and who else was part of the entire cartel," said the release. (PTI)
Damian Talbot