Nigerian held with drugs worth Rs 55 lakh
He has been charged under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, the official said.
Officers of the Anti Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) of CID Crime seized 305.78 grams of mephedrone near Sabarmati Railway Station in Ahmedabad on May 31. The estimated value of the seized drug is Rs 9.17 lakh. One person was arrested at the scene.
The operation
The operation was carried out near the exit gate of Sabarmati Railway Station. It was based on specific intelligence inputs received by the force. A team from the ANTF-Ahmedabad Zone conducted the raid under the instructions of senior officials.
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Officers found the drug in the possession of the accused and detained him on the spot.
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The accused
The arrested man was identified as Prakash Bishnoi, 26 years old. He is a resident of Kotra in Karwada village of Jalore district in Rajasthan.
The complaint also names a second accused, Gopal Singh Bhadu, from Parawa village in Jalore district. He has not been arrested yet.
What the police seized
Officials listed the seized items as a transparent plastic bag containing 305.78 grams of mephedrone valued at Rs 9,17,340, a OnePlus Nord-2 5G mobile phone valued at Rs 10,000, a railway ticket, a black cardboard box, a zip-lock plastic bag, a Lakshmi Readymade and Fancy Store carry bag, and a blue-coloured bag.
The total estimated value of all seized items was placed at Rs 9,27,340.
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Case registered
The ANTF registered the case under Sections 8(c), 22(c), and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985. Further investigation has been handed over to the Sabarmati Railway Police Station in Ahmedabad.
Mephedrone, commonly called MD, is a synthetic stimulant. It is a Schedule I drug under the NDPS Act, meaning its manufacture, sale, and possession are all criminal offences.
Part of a larger pattern
This arrest is not an isolated case. Ahmedabad has seen a string of mephedrone seizures in recent months. The latest seizure is part of what officials describe as a wider interstate supply network funnelling the drug into Gujarat.
Earlier this month, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch arrested a man in Danilimda and seized 468.6 grams of mephedrone valued at more than Rs 14 lakh during a raid on a rented flat. Police said the accused had allegedly sourced the drug from Rajasthan and was distributing it in parts of the city.
In another case, the city Crime Branch arrested two persons from Madhya Pradesh near the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway and recovered 525 grams of mephedrone worth Rs 52.5 lakh. Investigators said the consignment came allegedly routed from Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh through a network operating in Ahmedabad.
The Rajasthan and UP connections
Multiple recent seizures point to Rajasthan as a key source state for mephedrone entering Ahmedabad. Both the May 31 arrest and the Danilimda case have Jalore district, Rajasthan, as a common point.
In March this year, the Gujarat ATS traced a mephedrone supply chain from Ahmedabad to an illegal manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh. Officials seized six kg of mephedrone, 50 kg of liquid mephedrone, and large quantities of precursor chemicals from that unit.
The pattern shows that Ahmedabad is both a transit point and as a distribution hub for synthetic drugs manufactured in other states.
Gujarat’s wider anti-narcotics drive
Gujarat has been at the centre of large-scale mephedrone busts over the past few years. In a separate earlier case, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch seized 412 grams of mephedrone valued at Rs 12.36 lakh and arrested two men during a raid in the Gheekanta area. Officials said the operation followed specific intelligence inputs received during election-related patrolling.
The Gujarat ATS, in one of its biggest operations, seized 907 kg of narcotics drug mephedrone worth Rs 1,841 crore with the help of the Narcotics Control Bureau after raiding a factory in the Bagroda Industrial Estate on the outskirts of Bhopal. Investigators said the factory had the capacity to produce approximately 25 kg of mephedrone per day.
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