MUMBAI: Ever since the early sixties, Mumbai, with its easily available air, water and land transport, has served as a key transit point for narcotics smugglers. With the advent of synthetic drugs, this has gone a step further, with urban localities across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) quietly reinventing themselves into a manufacturing hub.
This is especially true of mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant also known by its street name, MD. Discreet MD manufacturing, which started in defunct factories in some chemical hubs, has now reached households in Nalasopara, a distant suburb that has grown into a sprawling network of clandestine manufacturing units. From tiny flats to secluded farmhouses and hidden chemical plants, places here are churning out synthetic narcotics worth crores of rupees every day.
These illicit operations aren’t the only ones. MD manufacturing is happening through industrial corridors, in MIDC zones like Trans-Thane Creek and in world-class logistics hubs. Manufacturing synthetic drugs couldn’t be easier thanks to the abundant and easily available raw material that can be transported without suspicion, and the Mumbai police say they have seen it all.
A 300-sq-ft flat in Nalasopara
A seven-year-old boy’s bravery helped the Tulinj police bust a manufacturing unit and recover high-grade MD worth ₹5 crore.
It was a hot Friday afternoon, and police sub-inspector Rahul Fad and his team were roaming the dingy lanes of Pragati Nagar in the suburb that’s long been a hideout for foreigners, especially Nigerian nationals, staying illegally in India. It was here that they stumbled on the MD-making unit being run from a 300-sq-ft flat in a dilapidated building.
As the team entered the four-storey Anshit Plaza and began knocking on doors to check on potentially overstaying Nigerians, a woman, clearly of African origin, walked out. Fad asked her to stop but before he could ask where she lived, the woman fled. Sensing that she was an illegal resident, the police gave chase and apprehended her.
Residents of the building were mum when the police asked them if the Nigerian woman stayed in the building, but seven-year-old Vedant Singh, who had just come out of his house, informed the police that she stayed on the fourth floor. After initially resisting, the woman eventually handed over the house keys to the police.
On entering the flat, the officers were shocked to discover that the premises were a makeshift MD factory comprising only a fan, a stove, a few utensils and two lamps. The coarse white crystals were being dried on a mat and were also inside a utensil on the stove. “The strong stench emanating from the stove was enough for us to know that it was MD,” said Fad.
When questioned, the 26-year-old woman, Rita Fati Kurebewei, broke down and revealed that she had rented the room a year ago and visited it every day to make MD. Kurebewei, who lived with her boyfriend, Henryuchenna Uwakve, in the neighbouring building, was taught to make the drug by Uwakve, who handled the sales. The couple would travel to Gujarat and Rajasthan once every two months for the raw material, said Fad, adding that the police recovered high-grade MD worth ₹5 crore from the room.
The Mokhada farmhouse factory
After extracting information from drug peddlers in Mira Road, the Mira Bhayander-Vasai Virar (MBVV) police on October 24, 2023 reached a secluded modest farmhouse in a remote tribal village in Mokhada taluka in Palghar district. When they reached the spot, the farmhouse was locked and the caretaker was asleep outside. The police opened it to find a sophisticated chemical lab inside with test tubes, beakers and lots of raw material for making MD.
The farmhouse owner, Sameer Chandrashekhar Pinjara, 45, lived alone and manufactured the MD single-handedly, producing at least one kg of MD every three to four days. Pinjara would then give the drug to his close aide, Gautam Ghosh, 38, who packed it and distributed it to peddlers. The MBVV crime branch seized drugs worth ₹36 crore and arrested seven people.
In the name of goat farming
Another MD factory, run from a farmhouse on a space that was ostensibly a goat farm, was busted by the RCF police in May. The racket was unearthed this April when an RCF police team, while patrolling the Chembur area, spotted Rehan Shaikh, a suspected drug peddler, and found 45 grams of MD worth ₹4.5 lakh, in his possession. Going up the chain, they reached Sonu Pathan, an alleged wholesaler of drugs. His interrogation led them to the farmhouse, from where they seized raw materials and equipment worth around ₹70 crore.
The factory was planned by an accused arrested, Shakeel Memon, earlier by the Naya Nagar police in Mira Road in 2021. After getting out on bail last year, he and his son Arkan Memon hired Akram Aslam Surti (44), an Ankleshwar resident, to run the ₹1.5-crore laboratory. The father-son duo even purchased 27 goats and a few dogs and kept them in the farmhouse to conceal the strong odour of MD. Whenever someone in the vicinity inquired about the smell, the Memons would tell them that it was because of the goats and dog vaccinations.
The Ambernath, Ankleshwar, chemical factory busts
What began with the Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) arresting a Govandi peddler with 250 gm of MD in his possession led to a massive drug bust. After tracking some more layers of the drugs network, the Worli unit reached Pravin Kumar Singh and recovered 705 kg of MD from his commercial tenement in Nalasopara. On August 8, the ANC arrested Kiran Pawar, the manager of Namau Chem, a chemical factory at Ambernath where industrial quantities of the drug were manufactured.
A forensic audit of Singh’s bank account showed large deposits and other transactions totalling ₹50 crore in the last few months alone. As per the police investigation, Singh, who hails from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, began producing and supplying MD just as the pandemic lockdown began, leading to spiralling anxiety and a spurt in demand. Singh, who had studied organic chemistry, had moved to Mumbai and earlier worked as a supervisor and manager at multiple chemical units in the city.
The probe later also resulted in the arrest of Giriraj Dixit (54), owner of a factory in Ankleshwar, Gujarat, and seizure of 513 kg of MD and raw material, together worth ₹1,026 crore. ANC officials said that Singh, who had earlier worked in a pharmaceutical company in Gujarat, met Dixit and convinced him to allow him to manufacture MD in his factory. For around a year, Singh visited the Ankleshwar factory and guided employees on manufacturing the drug. The drug bust also led to the seizure of 812 kg of white powder and 397 kg of chemicals, suspected to be used in the production of MD, from Dixit’s factory.
“We later found that three consignments of MD of 500 kg each were manufactured in the factory in 2022 and delivered to Singh’s commercial space in Nalasopara,” said DCP Datta Nalawade, who was heading the ANC back then.
The Sangli MD factory
The Mumbai police crime branch bust a drug factory in Sangli district which was being run for around seven months and seized 122 kg of high-quality MD and gold worth around ₹253 crore.
It all began on February 16, 2024, when the police arrested four people and seized four kg of MD from them. The accused—Vasudev Laxman Jadhav, 34, Prasad Mohite, 24, Vikas Malme, 25, and Avinash Mali, 28—are residents of Kavathe Mahakal in Sangli district, while Laxman Balu Shinde, 35, the mastermind who guided them, is a resident of Kolhapur district.
Shinde, after completing his SSC, came to Thane, where he had four criminal cases registered against him. He got into the drug business a few years ago when he met a person in jail in 2016 and started selling contraband in the city. He later went to Varanasi, where he learnt to make high-quality MD.
After buying a 12-acre plot at his native place, Shinde set up the laboratory on half an acre of land a year ago and started manufacturing MD around seven months back. So far, he has manufactured over 1,000 kg, said Datta Nalawade, then DCP in the crime branch.
The police got leads about the Sangli lab after they arrested four people in February and seized 3.641 kg of MD from them. Parvin Bano Gulam Shaikh was first apprehended on February 16 in Santacruz. After questioning, she confessed that Sajid Mohd Asif Shaikh alias Debas supplied her with the drugs, and he was also arrested the same day. Their interrogation led the police to Ijaj Ali Ansari and Adil Imtiyaz Vohra on February 18 and eventually to the Sangli lab.
After this, police inspector Atmaji Sawant and his team worked for several days in Irali village, located the factory and arrested six people. They seized 122 kg of high-quality MD, ₹15 lakh in cash, and gold, all together worth around ₹253 crore.