IT Correspomdent
Pune, Sept. 25:
Three persons were arrested and 130 kgs Marijuana worth Rs 25 lakh was seized from them by the Anti-Narcotics Cell (West region) of Pune City Police’s crime branch from Yerwada area on Thursday.
The accused were identified as Prashant Haribhau Shinde (25) and Arun Baliram Jadhav (26) of Nigdi, and Shubham Sunil Mohite (19) of Khed by the police.
Acting on a tip-off received by policeman Pradip Gade, a team led by Senior Police Inspector Rajendra Mohite laid a trap and seized the drugs at about 4 PM near Don Bosco school in Yerwada. The accused had come on a four-wheeler. When the police tried to nab them they tried to run away. But the police caught them and confiscated five bags of marijuana from them.
The police said that the accused had purchased the banned drugs from Andhra Pradesh and were planning to sell it in Nigdi area in Pimpri-Chinchwad. Police sub-inspector Dattaji Mohite, is investigating the case.
The action was taken under the guidance of Additional CP (Crime) Ashok Morale, DCP (Crime) Bachchan Singh and ACP Shivaji Pawar by the team comprising PSIs Nilesh Mahadik and Dattaji Mohite, police personnel- Ramesh Garud, Mangesh Pawar, Sunil Chikhle, Vijay Gurav, Mahesh Kadam, Sahil Shaikh, Manoj Shinde, Firoz Bagwan, Pramod Tilekar, Pradip Shitole, Pravin Padwal, Rupali Karnwar and Mohan Yelpalle.
In yet another recent raid, 4 persons were arrested and 1.4 kgs narcotic drugs were seized by the Mumbai police from two locations. Rahil Vishram(42) was arrested from Versova at Andheri in North West Mumbai, along with 928 grams Charas (weed) and Rs.4.32 lakh cash was recovered from him. Besides 495 gram marijuana was seized from Vishal Salve (25) and Jaichetan Raichera (29) from Badlapur in Thane district. Besides Rohan Talwar (29) and Nongchang Lota (30) were nabbed from Powai in North East Mumbai on charges of drug peddling.
Meanwhile as per the study by the “Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy”(VCLP), a Bengaluru (Karnataka) based independent think tank, the Mumbai continues to contribute the “lion’s share” of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) cases and the Mumbai accounted for 82 per cent of all the cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act 1985 in Maharashtra in 2018.
Now the NDPS act has into focus after the arrest of actress Rhea Chakraborty by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in Mumbai under various sections of the NDPS Act. In 2014, 97.6 per cent of all NDPS cases in Maharashtra belonged to Mumbai, 98.1 per cent in 2015, 96.6 per cent in 2016, and 90.5 percent in 2017. Maharashtra saw an average of 1766 NDPS cases per year between 2010 and 2013. From 2013 to 2014, the number of cases jumped more than five times to 14622. VCLP analysed 839 case orders available from a database of over 10,000 cases from magistrate courts in Mumbai, extracted on October 31, 2019.