373 pieces of e-cigarettes worth ₹6.88L seized at Muchhad Paanwala shop

MUMBAI: Acting on a tip-off, Mumbai crime branch officials on Wednesday carried out a raid at the famous Muchhad Paanwala shop at Breach Candy and seized 373 pieces of banned electronic cigarettes worth ₹6.88 lakh from its godown.

The owner of the paan shop, identified as Lakhan Kumar Premshankar Tiwari, was booked under the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, 2019, and was handed over to the Gamdevi police. Lakhan is one of the members of the Tiwari family, which owns the Muchhad Paanwala shop.

E-cigarettes were banned in India in September 2019, and the government prohibited the production, import, export, sale, storage and advertisement of vapes.

Muchhad Paanwala was started by Shyamcharan Tiwari, who came to Mumbai in 1961 from Prayagraj and sold fruits and vegetables before becoming a paan vendor. His son, Jaishankar, took charge of the shop in the 1970s. The shop is named ‘Muchhad’ after Shyamcharan Tiwari’s long handlebar moustache, which all the Tiwaris in the family have attempted to mimic. Over decades, the shop has become a favourite post-dinner pit stop for patrons, including Bollywood celebrities, however, the Tiwari family is also notorious for courting trouble with the law.

The police said the owners connected with the customers at the pan stall and took them into confidence about selling e-cigarettes. They used to take several buyers to the godown behind their shop and sell the e-cigarettes for ₹1,800 and more for per piece.

“We had a tip-off that a large quantity of e-cigarettes was stocked at the shop’s godown. Besides Breach Candy, raids were also was carried out at godowns located in Chinoy Mansion and Gamdevi by inspector Dilip Tejankar, sub-inspector Sanjay Bhave, and constables Prashant Titame, Sunil Harad, Sandeep Avhad and Amol Salunke,” said an officer. During the raid, the police found foreign-made banned vapes of various flavours, including grapes, chilly, lychee, watermelon ice, mint etc. worth ₹6.88 lakh. “The Tiwari brothers take turns as to who will run Muchhad Paanwala for a designated period and we learnt that the shop at Breach Candy was run by Lakhan, a resident of Tardeo,” said the police officer. The crime branch registered a case at the Gamdevi police station under section 4 of the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, 2019 which bans the production, manufacturing, import, export, transport, sale, distribution and advertisement etc of electronic cigarettes.

“Lakhan told us that he had gotten those e-cigarettes from Mansur from the Crawford Market,” said an officer.

Further investigation into the case will now be carried out by the Gamdevi police. The police have issued Tiwari a notice of appearance before them under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and allowed him to go as the punishment is less than seven years imprisonment.