Sikkim man 20th suspect arrested in Delhi’s Rs 13,000-crore drug seizure case

Sharma’s arrest is the 20th in this case. “He had visited Thailand multiple times and brought consignments of Thai marijuana, which he hid in his luggage, at the airports,” the officer said.

In October 2024, the Special Cell’s Eastern Range recovered 1,289 kg of cocaine and 39.706 kg of Thai marijuana from Delhi and Gujarat in the biggest-ever drug haul operation in Delhi.

Key members, including Virender Basoiya aka Veeru, the Dubai-based businessman allegedly funding the cartel’s operation, are yet to be arrested.

The team has been investigating two different chains of suppliers of cocaine and Thai marijuana, though they were to the same set of people for further supply in India, the officer added.

The syndicate

On October 1, 2024, 562 kg of cocaine and 39.70 of Thai Marijuana were seized in South Delhi’s Mahipalpur. Police had arrested Tushar Goel, one of Basoiya’s alleged henchmen in Delhi, and three others.

Then, on October 10 the same year, 208 kg of cocaine was seized from a shop in West Delhi’s Ramesh Nagar.

The third seizure was made on October 13, 2024, when Special Cell sleuths and the Gujarat Police recovered 518 kg of cocaine worth Rs 5,000 crore in the international market during a raid at a firm called Aavkar Drugs in Ankleshwar.

Five people were arrested, including three of the company’s listed directors — Ashwin Keshubhai Ramani, Brijesh Kothia, and Vijay Keshavlal Bhesania. The other two men arrested were Mayur, an employee of a company named Pharma Solutions Services, and middleman Amit Masuria, who allegedly aided the meeting between representatives of the two firms, police said.

That’s when police put the pieces together. Multiple pharmaceutical companies based in South India and Gujarat — including five legitimate and three shell firms — were allegedly used to transport 1,289 kg of cocaine and 40 kg of hydroponic Thai marijuana that was smuggled in by the cartel into the national capital.

“The drugs arrived at multiple locations in India from South America via Dubai. They were to arrive at Aavkar Drugs in multiple consignments by road to be refined and processed,” an officer had said.

These drugs were then moved out of Gujarat as medical consignments and handed over, on paper, to Pharma Solutions Services, police had said. “These were transported as medicine packages of Pharma Solutions Services via road to Delhi-NCR,” the officer had said.

A chargesheet of over 10,000 pages had been filed by the Delhi Police in the Patiala House court that named 19 people allegedly linked to the cartel. Of them, 17 were arrested and five were declared ‘proclaimed offenders.