Stock broker Harshad Mehta. (Express archive photo by Vivek Bendre 15.7.93) The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) have arrested a close associate of late stockbroker Harshad Mehta from Munirka village in New Delhi in connection with a drugs case.
Niranjan Shah had previously been arrested in other drug-related cases as well and was also accused of having a role in the multi-crore securities scam, which was masterminded by Mehta in the 1990s.
Officials said they have been looking for Shah since March, as a person identified as Sohel Yusuf Memon, arrested with contraband of 5.65 kg of Mephedrone (MD), had named him as his accomplice. The ATS officials said the banned psychotropic substance seized from him was valued at Rs 2.53 crore in the international market.
Memon was placed under arrest and during the course of his interrogation, he revealed that he had procured the contraband from Shah, officials said.
Accordingly, an offence was registered under sections 8 (C), 22 and 29 of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985 and Shah was named as a wanted accused in the case.
“When we started looking into his history, we came to know that Shah is a known drug trafficker. He is on the record of various police stations in Mumbai and Delhi besides that of Anti-Narcotics Cell, Mumbai, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), New Delhi, and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). He has also been arrested several times by different agencies,” said an officer.
Ever since his role was identified in the ATS’s drug case, the Juhu Unit of the squad had been trying to trace him.
“The accused had fled from Mumbai and was evading arrest by constantly changing his location. He had travelled to Madhya Pradesh initially and was hiding there. He had also been in Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. On several occasions, we managed to trace his location but by the time we reached, he had already fled,” said an officer.
The ATS recently got his location at Munirka village in Delhi. “We received another input that he was staying in a single-room flat that he had rented on someone else’s name,” said an officer. The ATS officials then laid a trap and caught him.
Shah was brought to Mumbai and placed under arrest. He was produced in a court which remanded him in the custody of the ATS till August 25.
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