Officers from the Narcotics Control Bureau seized party drugs worth Rs26 crore — probably the largest till date — from two laboratories on the outskirts of the city.
Officers from the Narcotics Control Bureau seized party drugs worth Rs26 crore — probably the largest till date — from two laboratories on the outskirts of the city.
“We raided two makeshift laboratories — one in Asangaon and the other in Mira Road,” Yashodhan Wange, zonal director, NCB, Maharashtra & Goa, said. “The contraband seized was meant for foreign countries.”
The first raid took place on August 19 at Ganga Industrial Estate in Asangaon, Thane. A spice-manufacturing unit was used for chemical synthesisation to make Metamphetamine.
The officers seized 8.45kg of finished Metamphetamine worth Rs8.5 crore, raw material such as 10 litres of Metamphetamine liquid worth Rs5 crore, 60kg Ephedrine worth Rs30 lakh and a large quantity of chemicals and apparatus. Seven people were arrested, an officer said.
While one is a Dutch of Indian origin, the others are Iranian chemical experts.
The NCB officers also raided Swati Apartment in Oshiwara where the Iranians were staying. They seized at least 13kg of Ephedrine worth around Rs6.5 lakh and 1kg of Amphetamine worth Rs1 crore.
The unit inside Ganga Industrial Estate belonged to 41-year-old Dutch Kisoor Nandan. Masoud Naserziyary, 34, Hossein Aghaei, 39, Amir Dehdashti, 24, Mohammadreza Zorgari, 33 , Seyed Hosseini, 35 and Gulam Azad, 54, are the chemical experts from Iran.
On August 21, the NCB raided Hatkesh Udyog Nagar in Mira Road.
They seized 8kg of Amphetamine worth Rs8 crore and 1.47kg of Metamphetamine, 280 tablets of Ephedrine worth Rs8.97 lakh, 173kg of Pseduoephedrine tablets, 13.5kg of Pseudoephedrine powder, 8,730 Actifed tablets, and 26,310 Lorfast-D tablets totalling almost Rs11.75 crore. The officers arrested Jacob Madathil, 58 and Luis Carlos, 41, (a Columbian).
Kisoor Nandan, an officer said, has dual nationality — Surinam and the Netherlands. He used his spice-manufacturing unit to prepare these drugs to clear his debts.
The officer said that Nandan’s family has a spice export business. Earlier, the unit was used to stock spices. He was in the same business, but operating from Surinam where his losses ran up to 1 lakh Euros.
He thought he could earn a lot of money by manufacturing Metamphetamine. One of the Iranians arrested, Gulam Azad, has a criminal record. He used his contacts to get the other chemical experts.
The chemicals were bought locally, the officer said. It is possible that Nandan chose the unit because the smell of spice could camouflage the odour coming out during synthesization, the officer said.
Ever since the chemical experts arrived in the city from Iran two weeks ago, they started working in the lab 24x7. They charged $1500 for making 1kg of finished Metamphetamine.
Jacob Madathil arrested in the Mira Road lab raid sought Columbian Carlos’s help to set up a base in Honduras to sell the drug. Carlos used to work in a private airline.
Another officer said the two had planned delivery of the contraband to Honduras. During interrogation, Madathil told the officers that the mastermind is based in Morocco.
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