City businessman, 17 others named in narcotic racket

City businessman, 17 others named in narcotic racket
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

MARCH 1: A city businessman has been named in a complaint filed by the Narcotics Control Bureau, Mumbai in a special court trying offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) this week. Sreeniwas B Somani, managing trustee of a reputed school in South Mumbai, and CMD of Chemo Pharma Laboratories Ltd, is named along with 18 other accused in a case booked by the NCB, Mumbai in November last year. Mohammad Ibrahim Jhaveri, better known as Haji Pocketmar in the underworld, is one of the main accused.

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The case was detected following a seizure of 20 Kgs of mandrax tablets from a car in Sion in November last year. Three of the accused, arrested from the spot --- Suresh Futarmal Jain, Karakuttikaran Anthony and Rajeev Shiroor --- unravelled the whole story.

Somani's complicity is alleged through the admission of his employee, Kailash Ramprasad Somani, who was director (commercial) of M/S Chemo Pharma Lab Ltd. Kailash Somani has told NCB officers that the sale of the 1104.90 Kgs of acetic anhydride by Chemo Pharma (to Ramesh Chandmal Jain, the kingpin of the network) at the `black' rate of Rs 135.35 per kg instead of the market price which was Rs 35 per kilo was done with the knowledge of S B Somani.

The delivery challan bore the name of one Aarti Chemicals, but Jain signed for the receipt. The acetic anhydride (AA) was used in the manufacture of methaqualone powder, the main ingredient of mandrax.

The acetic anhydride was lying unused in Chemo Pharma's factory since a lockout in 1997. The sale was made despite the knowledge that the chemical is a controlled substance under NDPS and can be sold only to units with Excise and other registrations.

NCB officers also discovered the alleged attempts to destroy evidence by Somani's company. The evidence is in the destruction of pages of the security gate register of the Chemo Pharma factory which had notings of the inward and outward movement of the tempo which Ramesh Jain used to take delivery of the AA.

From statements of the accused, it was revealed that Suresh Jain was running a factory in Jalore with Ramesh Jain. Ramesh Jain, the kingpin of the syndicate, which was suspectdly supplying the mandrax to South Africa, was found by the NCB team from a building in Lower Parel, Mumbai.

Jain apparently got the the mandrax made in Jalore, Rajasthan with the expertise of one Chandrakant Bharambe and Dilip Nimade. The raw materials --- N-Anthranilic acid, Acetic Anhydride and Ortho-Toluidine were sourced from Kapuskar who was based in Kalyan. From this factory they had sold about seven lakh tablets at a cost of Rs nine per tablet, to one Amjad Hussein Khan, at Bhiwandi. Amjad was already in custody, the DRI having arrested him in May 2000 with 200 kgs of mandrax.

Ramesh Jain was operating through Suresh Jain to supply mandrax to Haji Pocketmar through one Mukesh Patel, whose real identity was revealed to be Jayendra Goswami, (brother of Vicky Goswami, who is now in custody in Dubai for drug running). Haji himself had been arrested by the Juhu police, Mumbai with 83 kgs of mandrax in Sept 2000. When the NCB started probing the gang after the seizure in Sion last November, Haji was also identified by Jayendra Goswami during the investigations.

Goswami himself was in custody of the Ahmedabad anti-terrorist police at the time NCB questioned him in this case.

It was revaeled that after Amjad's arrest by the DRI the gang wound up the Jalore factory and shifted base to Jalgaon district in Maharashtra. Bharambe had a factory in Yaval --- Rohan Arochem --- where again they started manufacture of mandrax by sourcing raw material from one Ramnikbhai Gajera. Ramesh Jain used to buy the raw material from Gajera through Digambar Kapuskar and Vinod Jain, a jeweller. It is the same Vinod Jain who introduced Jain to Kapuskar who in turn led them to Chemo Pharma, which was under a lockout since 1997.