The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad on Monday arrested two people from Ahmedabad and one person from Amreli district for allegedly running a racket of selling drugs, like charas and amphetamine, using their e-commerce platform, an ATS official said. The gang would send the drugs in boxes used by a leading e-commerce company and used VoIP and encrypted text messages to save themselves from being caught, he said. The accused procured the narcotics from outside Gujarat and have supplied the drugs so far in various parts of the state, including Surat and Vadodara, the official added.
The ATS recently learned that some people, hailing from the Amreli district, were running the narcotics racket from a rented flat in the Vastrapur area of Ahmedabad. Based on that input, an ATS team raided a flat in the Vastrapur area in the early hours of Monday and nabbed two persons with 3.63 kg of narcotics worth Rs 8.28 lakh, Deputy Superintendent of Police, ATS, Harsh Upadhyay told reporters. The seized cache included 321.52 gm of charas, 60.53 gm of opioid derivatives, 19.85 gm of amphetamine, and 3.23 kg of cannabis (ganja), he said.
The arrested persons were identified as Sohil Shirman and Basit Sama, both residents of Mota Liliya village in Amreli. The two accused told the police that the entire racket was being run by Akash Vinjhava, following which an ATS team reached Rajula town in Amreli and arrested him from his residence early Monday morning, the official said. "Akash and the others had created an e-commerce website to take orders from drug addicts and used to supply the narcotics through a courier service or through the drivers and cleaners of private luxury buses. They used to acquire drugs from outside Gujarat. We have also got the details of that supplier from the accused," Upadhyay said.
To dodge the authorities and make their e-commerce venture appear legitimate, the gang used to send the drugs in boxes that are used by e-commerce giant Amazon, the official said, adding that the accused also used VoIP and encrypted text messages as a precaution to save themselves from being caught. "The gang used to accept payments through online mode or through 'angadia' (a courier service). Till now, they have supplied drugs in different parts of Saurashtra, Surat, Vadodara, and Mehsana," the official said.
The three accused have been booked under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
(NDPS) Act, 1985. One more person, Karan Vagh, of Kovaya village in Amreli, is still on the run, the official said.
