The Delhi Police Special Cell and the Gujarat Police jointly raided a firm to recover 518 kg of cocaine.
The Delhi Police Special Cell and the Gujarat Police recovered 518 kg of cocaine during a raid at a firm in Gujarat’s Ankleshwar and arrested five people on Sunday.
The Delhi Police said the cocaine was recovered during a search at Aavkar Drugs Limited. The arrested include three of its listed directors – Ashwin Keshubhai Ramani, Brijesh Kothia and Vijay Keshavlal Bhesania. The other two are one employee of a company named Pharma Solutions Services and one middleman, who aided the meeting between representatives of the two firms.
“The drugs were to arrive at the Aavkar factory from Dubai to be ‘refined’ and processed. Then it was transported as ‘medicine’ packages of Pharma Solutions Services to Delhi-NCR,” a police officer said.
The police said the value of the seized cocaine in the international market was around Rs 5,000 crore. They said it was part of a consignment which was allegedly smuggled in by a cartel operated by Dubai-based businessman Virendra Basoiya.
Special Cell officers said 1,289 kg of cocaine and 40 kg of hydroponic Thailand marijuana, worth Rs 13,000 crore, had been recovered in this case so far. Aavkar Drugs, a company that claims to manufacture other chemical products on its website, was established on September 23, 2016.
The drugs were moved out of Gujarat as medical consignments and then were handed over, on paper, to a fake pharma company set up in the name of Pharma Solutions Services, the police said.
“The fake company hired employees on the pretext of working for a pharma brand, many of them MBA graduates, and used them to arrange storage in Delhi-NCR. The name of the company was also used to hire vehicles from transporters in Delhi to move the consignment from one godown to another,” a police officer said.
