Member of international drug cartel nabbed by Maharashtra ATS in Delhi
Aug 18, 2021
New Delhi [India], August 18 : Anti-Terrorism Squad, Maharashtra on Wednesday nabbed a member of an international drug cartel, who was also an associate of the late notorious Harshad Mehta, the main accused in the huge shares' scam of the 90s.
Juhu unit of Mumbai ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) arrested a wanted drug trafficker, Niranjan Shah, from Delhi's Munirka where he was staying as poor man in a single room hired on someone else's name, says State ATS.
On March 17, the Juhu Unit of ATS, Mumbai, acting on a specific piece of intelligence, had exposed a drug racket by arresting accused Sohel Yusuf Memon with a contra-band of 5.65 kilograms of Mephedrone (MD), a banned psychotropic substance, then valued at Rs 2.53 crore in the international market.
The arrested accused had procured the contraband from Niranjan Shah, the other accused. Accordingly, an offence under sections 8(C), 22, 29 of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985 was registered and accused Niranjan Shah was shown as wanted in the case.
As per the official release by the squad, it was revealed in the further course of the investigation that the wanted accused Niranjan Shah was a known drug trafficker on the record of various police stations in Mumbai, Delhi, Anti-Narcotics Cell, Mumbai, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), New Delhi and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). Further, the wanted accused was an associate of the late notorious Harshad Mehta, the main accused in the huge shares' scam of the 90s. He was also an accused on the record of the Economics Offences Wing, Mumbai.
The Juhu Unit of squad was continuously trying to trace and arrest the wanted accused. However, the accused had fled from Mumbai and was evading arrest by constantly changing his location across various states in the country, viz. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. He was also constantly changing his looks. It had, thus become a great challenge to trace and arrest the wanted accused.
However, the anti terrorism squad roamed across these states and with sheer hard work, perseverance and sustained pursuance traced the accused in Munirka village, Delhi where he was staying as a poor man in a single room hired on someone else's name and nabbed him in a covert operation yesterday. The accused Niranjan Shah was produced before the Court today and he has been remanded to ATS custody till August 25, 2021.
The arrest of the wanted accused Niranjan Shah was effected with the orders from ADG, ATS Vineet Kumar Agarwal, DIG Shivdeep Lande and SP Sohail Sharma.
The terrorism squad, Juhu team comprising of assistant police inspectors (API) Sachin Patil, API Dashrath Vitkar, API Sagar Kunjir and Staff headed by police inspector Dnyaneshwar Wagh worked tirelessly under the direct supervision of ACP Shripad Kale, in this operation.
