Mumbai: A clandestine laboratory manufacturing the narcotic mephedrone was raided in Amboli on Friday night, in which three people were arrested and 900 grams of finished mephedrone worth ₹18 lakh was seized. The police also seized raw materials like caustic soda, acetone, petroleum ether, aluminium chloride and sulphuric acid, enough to make around 60 kg of the drug, better known by its street names ‘MD’ and ‘meow meow’. Equipment seized included vacuum pumps, beakers, weighing scales and funnels, police said.
The well-organised set-up’s location was revealed following the arrest of Nadeem Sheikh (27). On August 21, Sheikh was apprehended with one kg of mephedrone by API Daya Nayak and a team from Amboli police station. “We interrogated Sheikh for the source of the drugs. Based on information he revealed, we conducted a raid on a factory unit in Dahanu, Palghar, where the drugs were being manufactured,” an officer at Amboli police station said. They said the unit was operating out of a small space next to a house near farms belonging to the villagers of Bambanwadi.
Three suspects picked up during in the raid were later placed under arrest. They were identified as Sanyal Bane (23), Anwar Chowdhary (37) and Sultan Rauf (41). They have been charged under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotripic Substances (NDPS) Act. The accused were produced in court on Saturday, which remanded them in police custody till September 1.
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The officer said, “The accused had set up a professional laboratory for processing mephedrone. They had set up a 50-metre-long pipe extending into the farms behind the laboratory to dispense the smoke generated during the process, and would manufacture mephedrone between midnight and dawn so that the smell doesn’t attract attention,” said the officer.
Police said Bane, a resident of Valsad in Gujarat, is a science graduate and was the brains behind the operation, while the other two are Dahanu residents and were helping him. Inquiries so far indicate they had been running the operation for at least four months, and are suspected to have moved here from another location.