The Thane police on Wednesday claimed to have uncovered fully an international drug manufacturing and peddling racket, with the arrest of three more persons — including an alleged smuggler and a director of a pharmaceutical company — in connection with the recent seizure of `2,000 crore worth Ephedrine, a medicine used to manufacture a party drug crystal meth.
Acting on information provided by the officials from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the investigators on Tuesday night arrested Punit Shringi, considered the main kingpin behind the racket, from Mumbai’s western suburbs and seized 100 kgs of Ephedrine from a swift car in which he had spent the last two days.
Shringi was on the run ever since the Thane police made a seizure of 18.62 tonnes of Ephedrine from the Solapur plant of pharmaceutical company Avon life Science, where the drug had been manufactured and other places early this month.
Also arrested were Manoj Jain, one of the directors of the pharmaceutical company, and one Harjitsingh Gill whose vehicles were made use of to transport the narcotics within the country.
With the three fresh arrests, the total number of arrests made in connection with the `2,000 crore Ephedrine drug racket has gone up to eight. Earlier, the police had taken into custody five persons, including a Nigerian involved in the peddling of the drug.
Addressing a news conference, Thane Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh said: “We have finally laid hands on the main suspect behind the entire racket. Punit Shringi is a prize catch for us. Some of the persons we have arrested so far were working in coordination with drug smuggler Vicky Goswami. They had visited and met him several times in Kenya and were about to start a project at Mombasa to process the Ephedrine into other forms to be used for party drugs and narcotics.”
Singh said the some of the pharmaceutical company officials had hired Shringi in September 2015 to oversee the entire drug manufacturing and smuggling racket. He was responsible for the movement of the Ephedrine, manufactured at the factory of Avon life Science.