New Delhi: Mumbai police on Thursday seized over 700kg of mephedrone worth Rs 1,400 crore after a raid at a drug manufacturing unit at Nalasopara in Palghar district, and arrested five persons, news agency PTI reported. According to the report, the Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) of the Mumbai crime branch conducted a raid at the drug unit in Nalasopara (west) and recovered the contraband that was to be supplied to drug peddlers in Mumbai and its neighbouring areas.
According to the report, the main accused in the case is a post-graduate in organic chemistry, who got the formula of producing mephedrone through experiments, and one of the other four arrested accused is a woman.
"The raid was carried out based on specific inputs, which the ANC's Worli team had received after the arrest of a drug peddler from Govandi, a suburb in Mumbai, in March this year. Mephedrone weighing 250 grams had been recovered from him at that time," PTI quoted an official as saying.
"The ANC team recovered 701.740 kg mephedrone valued at Rs 1,403 crore from the accused," said Datta Nalawade, Deputy Commissioner of Police (ANC), in a press conference.
"The main accused is a 52-year-old man, who holds a post-graduate degree in organic chemistry. After experimenting with various chemicals, he found out the formula of producing mephedrone," he said, adding that he was producing "high quality" substance.
During probe, the ANC officials got to know that some more persons were involved in the illegal trade, following which they arrested the woman and one more person, and seized 2.760 kg of mephedrone.
Continuing its probe, Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested one more accused and nabbed the main accused a day later at the Nalasopara unit.
The official said that during probe, it came to light that the main accused himself was manufacturing the banned drug.
"Wholesalers in the drug trade used to contact him for mephedrone and he was not selling the banned substance less than 25 kg in quantity," he said.
Out of the five accused, four were arrested in Mumbai, while one person was held in Nalasopara, the official said.
Notably, Mephedrone, also known as 'meow meow' or MD, is a synthetic stimulant, a psychotropic substance banned under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.