Solving Crime: How DRI caught 4,365 kg of hashish stashed in 194 drums of ‘mango chutney’ consignment from Vikhroli to London
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence raided a warehouse in Mumbai's Vikhroli to seize hashish hidden in drums along with chutney.
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At the end of the raid, the agency claimed a seizure of 4,365 kg of hashish, valued then at Rs 2.6 crore in India and Rs 40 crore abroad. (File)In 1987, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) received a tip-off about a conspiracy to export hashish, a potent form of cannabis, from India and that it was stored in a warehouse in Vikhroli, an eastern suburb of Mumbai.
The input was that a warehouse in Vikhroli should be kept under watch for suspicious activity. Although DRI sleuths put the warehouse under surveillance, the workers escaped after learning they were being watched. Finally, on July 2, 1987, it raided the warehouse.
Inside, officials found 550 plastic drums, and 194 of them had stickers of ‘sweet sliced mango chutney’ ready to be exported to London. They also found plastic packets hidden in the drums along with the chutney. These packets contained a dark brown substance, which was later found to be hashish.
At the end of the raid, the agency claimed a seizure of 4,365 kg of hashish, valued then at Rs 2.6 crore in India and Rs 40 crore abroad. The agency searched various properties and named ten people as accused, including the owner of the warehouse, drivers and those who supplied the chutney.
The agency submitted to a court that the accused procured hashish, bought mango chutney from a factory at Wada in Maharashtra, and prepared fake documents to show that the chutney was to be exported.
They then allegedly packed the drugs in plastic packets and stored them at the warehouse. The agency alleged that the accused used a non-existent company’s name on the drums’ labels.
In a trial that concluded in 2010, three of the accused were acquitted, including the main accused, due to factors such as ill-treatment and illegal detention.
In 2024, however, a special court in Mumbai found one of the accused, Nitin Khimji Bhanushali, guilty of working for a syndicate for the illicit trafficking of drugs. He was convicted under various sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and the Customs Act, sentenced to 20 years in jail, and fined Rs 10 lakh.
Bhanushali had been serving a prison term in another case in the Rampur district jail in Uttar Pradesh, and was brought to Mumbai in 2018 to face trial in this case.
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