Drug mastermind opted to use functional units: Police

Pune: Alleged drug racket mastermind Sandeep Dhuney and his associates used the modus operandi of producing mephedrone (MD) drugs in smaller working units after the local authorities, including the police, brought defunct units in industrial areas under their surveillance, said investigators in the know.In previous drug hauls that involved drug kingpin Lalit Patil, Baby Patankar and others, it was found that the culprits were hiring defunct industrial units in Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) areas in the state to produce MD, according to the police.

The Pune police are investigating a Rs3,676 crore drug racket after the seizure of a large quantity of MD from Pune, New Delhi and Sangli between Monday and Wednesday last week, as well as the arrest of nine suspects. The latter include the owner of a pharma plant in Kurkumbh of Daund tehsil, 75km from Pune off the highway to Solapur, besides a chemical expert from Dombivli.London-based Dhuney, who was earlier arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in 2016 in a drug haul in Pune, has been identified as the mastermind of the MD racket.A senior police officer associated with the investigation told TOI, “Instead of looking for a defunct unit, the suspects in the present case looked for a working one. Dhuney’s important link in Mumbai (against whom the police have issued a look out circular) and chemical expert Yuvraj Baban Bhujbal then contacted Earth Chem Pvt Ltd owner Bhimaji alias Anil Parshuram Sable (45) to start drug production in Kurkumbh.” The officer explained, “This move was made done to avoid any enhanced alertness of the authorities, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), MIDC and others. We interrogated the arrested men, which helped us establish how they hired services of a working unit.”Working factories or units that are in use tend to generally be neglected by police officials and other central agencies as they are regularly checked by factory inspectors and FDA officials.The police officer added, “Our questioning revealed that Dhuney preferred a unit where chemical components are used so as to be able to produce a diversified range of products. Sable’s unit zeroed in on by the Mumbai-based accomplice of Dhuney, who approached Sable, after which drug production began.”‘Synthetic drugs travel south to north India, get exported’A senior police officer looking into the drug seizure case told TOI that typically, traditional plant-based drugs like opium, marijuana, hashish and cocaine travel from north to south in India. But, synthetic drugs like mephedrone (MD), methamphetamine (meth) and ecstasy are travelling the opposite way in the country, from south to north.The officer added, “Many industries are located in southern parts of the country; some are defunct and some diversified. Drugs are produced here and then sent to north India. Some of the drugs are then sent to London from Delhi, from where we suspect they are further distributed to other European countries.”