Maharashtra: Man caught with mephedrone was reported missing

“When he did not return home until Monday, Geeta Waghela lodged a missing person’s complaint in the afternoon,” said an officer at Kherwadi police station.

However, Waghela was held outside a bus stop in Chembur on the slip road off the Santacruz-Chembur Link Road on Monday evening with a gunny bag filled with ten kilograms of mephedrone, said the Anti-Narcotics Cell of the Mumbai Police.

“We have closed the file on Waghela after learning that he was arrested by the ANC on Tuesday,” the officer said.

The ANC has also traced the source of the mephedrone found in Waghela’s Honda Civic car to a pharmaceutical factory in Hangal town in Karnataka. A team of officers from ANC’s Ghatkopar unit, led by inspector Anil Wadhawne found that the mephedrone was being produced at the factory and seized 1,014 litres of an unspecified chemical, 261 kilograms of bromine and 7 kilograms of another chemical, the ANC said, adding that the factory has been sealed.

According to the ANC, Waghela was employed as a marketing representative with a pharmaceuticals firm in Mumbai and left the job nine years ago to trade in painkillers and cancer medicine, purchasing the drugs from manufacturers and selling them to distributors. The ANC said Waghela had been selling mephedrone for the past six months. The Mumbai Police said in a statement that Waghela had purchased his car online and that they were also probing that transaction as well.