The Anti-Terrorism Squad of Maharashtra police has arrested Niranjan Shah, an aide of late Harshad Mehta, the notorious Big Bull of the nineties, in connection with a drugs case.
For nearly five months, the ATS gave Shah a hot chase constantly changing locations and looks.
Shah, who was involved in an international drugs syndicate, was arrested during a covert operation from a village in Delhi, where he was pretending to stay in a one-room tenement.
The major breakthrough was made by the Juhu unit of the ATS.
Shah, a history-sheeter, was a known drug trafficker on the record of various police stations in Mumbai, Delhi, the Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) of Mumbai Police, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).
Besides, he was also wanted by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police.
On 17 March, 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 contraband of 5.65 kg of Mephedrone (MD), a banned psychotropic substance, then valued at Rs. 2.53 crore in the international market.
During the investigations, It was revealed that the arrested accused had procured the contraband from Shah.
The Juhu Unit of ATS 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 - Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. He was also constantly changing his looks,” ATS officials said.
“It had thus become a great challenge to trace and arrest the wanted accused. However, the ATS, Juhu unit roamed across these states and with sheer hard work, perseverance and sustained pursuance traced the accused in Munirka village, Delhi where he was pretending to stay as a poor man in a single room hired on someone else’s name,” the added.
Shah was produced before the court on Wednesday and he has been remanded to ATS custody till 25 August.
“It was revealed that the wanted accused was an associate of the late notorious Harshad Mehta, the main accused in the huge shares’ scam of the 90s,” they said.
The operation was personally supervised by Additional Director General of Police Vineet Kumar Agarwal, who heads the ATS, Deputy Inspector General Sandeep Lande, Superintendent of Police Sohail Sharma and Assistant Commissioner of Police Shripad Kale.
The ATS Juhu team headed by Police Inspector Dnyaneshwar Wagh included Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Patil, Assistant Police Inspector Dashrath Vitkar, Assistant Police Inspector Sagar Kunjir.