Postal employee from MP was part of int’l drug cartel, arrested

Navi Mumbai: The Navi Mumbai police have arrested an employee of the postal department in Mumbai from Madhya Pradesh for allegedly tracking the movement of parcels of hydroponic weed smuggled into India from Thailand and United States and ensuring they were despatched to desired locations. This has taken the number of arrests in connection with the April 14 drug bust at Navi Mumbai to 11, including two police constables, a former hockey player and a Customs officer.

The special investigation team probing the case suspects the accused are all part of an international cartel operated by the sons of builder Gurunath Chichkar, who recently died by suicide.

“The SIT has found that the cartel is operated from Thailand and US, either by Naveen Chichkar or his younger brother Dheeraj Chichkar or both. The role of the two is yet to be confirmed,” deputy commissioner of police (crime branch) Amit Kale told Hindustan Times.

The alleged cartel was busted on April 14, when, acting on a tip-off, the anti-narcotics cell laid a trap in Nerul and seized 17.19 grams of hydroponic weed valued at ₹2,76,500, said sources in Navi Mumbai police. Nerul residents Asish Ramesh Gaware, 22, and Ahmed Khaled Algi, 23, who were caught red-handed dealing in hydroponic weed, were the first to be arrested in the case while their accomplice, Akash Maurya, managed to flee from the spot.

Interrogation of Gaware and Algi led to the arrested of 10 other accused – former hockey player Sujit Raghunath Bangera, 28; Kamal Jaykishan Chandwani, 56; constables Sachin Baburao Bhalerao, 40 and Sanjay Fulkar, 36; angadias Ankit Pitambarbhai Patel and Rinku Kumar Patel; customs officer Prashant Gaur, 40; and Sahil Shabbir Lambe, 27.

Ravi Sripal, 30, the postal employee, was arrested from his native place in Jabalpur on Tuesday and later brought to Mumbai.

Investigators learned about the modus operandi of the cartel and the roles of individual members while interrogating the arrested accused. According to the officers, Bangera, the hockey player, would place orders for drug consignments from abroad, following which one of the Chichkar brothers would send the ordered drugs to India via air courier. At the airport, the consignments would be cleared by Gaur, the customs officer. Chandwani would collect then the parcels from the airport and send them to Bangera, who paid for them in cash to the two angadias. The angadias would in turn transfer the money via cryptocurrency to the Chichkar brothers after deducting their commission while the two constables would take the lead in selling the drug in Navi Mumbai.

“Both the accused constables had been in regular contact with the customs officers and they handled the task of ‘protecting’ the cartel from legal cases and arrests,” an officer aware of the investigation told HT.