Cocaine among drugs worth Rs 250 cr seized in Maharashtra, 2 held

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has seized narcotics worth nearly Rs 250 crore in Maharashtra's Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and arrested two persons, the country's apex anti-smuggling agency said on Sunday.

The recovery of the drugs – cocaine, mephedrone and ketamine – was made on Friday based on inputs from DRI's Ahmedabad zonal unit and the crime branch there, said deputy commissioner of police (crime), Ahmedabad, Chaitanya Mandlik.

The crime branch of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, earlier Aurangabad, also assisted in the operation that involved searches at two factories and residential premises, said the DRI.

The seizure comes amid a massive spat between the ruling dispensation and opposition in Maharashtra following the recovery of drugs worth nearly Rs 300 crore by the Mumbai police and the alleged high connections of one of the key accused, Lalit Patil.

During the searches in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, the team recovered 23 kg of cocaine, about 2.9 kg of mephedrone and Rs 30 lakh in cash from the house of one of the two accused, the DRI said in a statement.

A total of 4.5 kg of mephedrone, 4.3 Kg of ketamine and “another mixture of mephedrone” weighing about 9.3 kg were recovered from a factory named Mahalakshmi Industries in the Paithan MIDC area, it said.

The illicit market value of the drugs is more than Rs 250 crore, said the DRI, adding two persons, including the “key conspirator”, have been arrested under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

Cocaine is a powerful central nervous system stimulant drug, while mephedrone and ketamine are known as party drugs, and they are all banned under the NDPS Act.

The operation puts the spotlight on the increasing use of synthetic drugs and the misuse of industrial units to manufacture the banned substances, the agency said.

Political rivals in Maharashtra are currently engaged in a war of words over Lalit Patil, a key accused in the seizure of 151 kg of mephedrone worth nearly Rs 300 crore by Mumbai's Sakinaka police from a few places, including a drug manufacturing unit in Nashik.

While the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray has accused Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who holds the Home portfolio in the Eknath Shinde government, of shielding the drug mafia in the state, the latter claimed that Patil was the Nashik chief of the undivided Shiv Sena under Uddhav Thackeray.

Patil had been arrested in 2020, when the Maha Vikas Aghadi was in power, but was never interrogated by the police, Fadnavis said.

On October 2, Patil escaped from the government-run Sassoon General Hospital in Pune. Later, he was arrested near Bengaluru and remanded in police custody till October 23. Several people, including women, have been arrested in the case.