Pune Crime Files: How a cold case probe led police to mephedrone racket that used a delivery app

The turning point

The confidential informant’s input suggested that Rathod was in the Sinhagad Srushti area of Pune city. Accordingly, a trap was laid on April 1 by the team of Police Sub Inspector Akshay Patil. When the team zeroed in on him and detained him, his movements looked suspicious to the investigation. A thorough search of Rathod was conducted in the presence of witnesses, and the police recovered three grams of mephedrone from his possession.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 3) Sambhaji Kadam, who monitored the probe, said, “Along with three grams of mephedrone, our team also recovered two cell phones from Rathod’s possession. An examination of the cell phones revealed that he had done more than 300 transactions on PhonePe and Google Pay in a short period of time.”

“He had sent a total of Rs 5.5 lakh to around eight people and had received money from more than 250 people in small amounts. Investigation revealed that he had been receiving large quantities of mephedrone from over half a dozen suppliers and was selling them in small quantities to users. This was all part of a sophisticated drugs racket. But there is one more shocking aspect of this racket which was yet to come to the fore.”

As the police teams took the probe further, they identified more suspects who were sending drugs to Rathod. As part of the probe so far, police have identified nine racketeers and arrested six, including Rathod. The other five arrested suspects have been identified as Shubham Dahibhate, Rajan Nayar, Jatin Kadam, Mohsin Akbar Sayyed and Omkar Pawar alias Omi. Police further seized more drugs from these suspects.

Senior Inspector Kshirsagar said, “Our investigation into the modus operandi of these suspects revealed that they were using a specific phone-based delivery application to move drugs between racketeers. The contraband was carefully packed in boxes and dispatched through these services, making it difficult to trace.”

“Preliminary checks suggest that the network had multiple layers, with intermediaries handling distribution to end users. We are continuing our search for the remaining suspects and tracking the full extent of the racket. We are also investigating the supply and distribution network.”