Ramkumar Tiwari on Tuesday. (Photo: Ganesh Shirsekar) The Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) on Tuesday arrested Ramkumar Tiwari, one of the brothers who owns the famous Muchchad Paanwala paan shop at Kemps corner in south Mumbai. The NCB said they found “half a kg of cannabis related drugs” in the warehouse, based on which Tiwari was called in for questioning. He was later produced before the court and remanded to judicial custody.
The name of Tiwari came up in connection with the case registered by the NCB on Saturday in which three persons, including a British national Karan Sajnani, were arrested by the agency. “It was Sajnani who provided narcotics to Tiwari,” an NCB officer said.
Muchchad Paanwala is one of the most famous paan shops in the city and also has a website where they take orders. The shop was started in 1977 by four brothers who had come to the city from Tiwaripur in Uttar Pradesh. As per their website, the shop was called Muchchad since one of the brothers had “moustache so big and long that it touched his ears”.
An officer said they are investigating if the narcotics found at their warehouse was also sold by them at the shop. “We found some ‘pre-rolled’ joints in the warehouse. We are checking if these were sold at their famous paan shop as well,” an NCB officer said.
In the case registered by the NCB on Saturday, a total of 75 kgs of marijuana, 125 kgs of marijuana-kind of material and many cannabis buds imported from the US, which are of high value, were allegedly recovered from Sajnani.
Apart from him two others were arrested in the case including one Rahila Furniturewala, who is also a suspect in the probe into the narcotics case linked to late actor Sushant Singh Rajput as well. The sister of Rahila named Shaista Furniturewala was also arrested as she too was found in possession of ganja, the agency had said.