From Sangli to Surat, UAE and Turkey, how Mumbai police joined dots to reach drug lord

Indian Express

2 hours ago

It began as a routine drug bust. Last year, the Mumbai Crime Branch arrested four people with 4 kg of mephedrone. From there, as the trail kept getting bigger, the police cast their net wider – starting with a mephedrone synthesising factory in Sangli to a fake pharma company in Surat and, finally, the UAE, where they uncovered an international drug network allegedly masterminded by Salim Dola, a wanted name in the narcotics trade.
Though the man himself is in Turkey, police believe they may have almost landed at his door by arresting his son Taher and nephew Mustafa Mohammad Kubbawala from the UAE and, in a space of four weeks, getting them deported from the UAE – an alacrity unusual for non-terror cases.
Over the years, mephedrone, a synthetic drug, has emerged as a key challenge for enforcement agencies, with the matter even finding a mention in the recently concluded monsoon session of the state legislature. Responding to BJP legislator Parinay Phuke, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said investigating agencies had seized 5,158 kg of mephedrone worth Rs 9,522 crore from Maharashtra over the past five years.
Dola, believed to have links with the Dawood Ibrahim gang, is known to be the kingpin of this mephedrone network. Police say his multi-state drug cartel is allegedly involved in the production and supply of mephedrone. The drug is usually synthesised at clandestine factories, three of which have been busted by the police in recent times.
'When it comes to mephedrone, it is the Dola network that provides funds and chemicals to various gangs, especially in Maharashtra and Gujarat to produce the drug. They also arrange for a place where the contraband can be cooked,' an official said.
While Dola has managed to remain elusive, police believe the arrests and deportations of his son and nephew may have served to 'break his back' and his network. While son Taher was deported from the UAE on June 13, nephew Kubbawala was brought to India on July 11 – both of them under a mutual legal assistance treaty between the two countries and the Interpol framework. Officials say that while it could be difficult to get Dola back to India for now, they have set their sights on Shakil Shaikh alias Lavish, Dola's second-in-command who is based in the UAE.
From the Mumbai neighbourhood of Cotton Green, Salim Ismail Dola has over the last few years grown to become one of the most wanted names in the narcotics circuit, allegedly with links to drug cartels in South Africa and Mexico. He was first arrested at the Mumbai airport in 1998 with 40 kg of mandrax.
Police suspect Dola to be linked to the Dawood Ibrahim gang and that he has allegedly taken on the role of Iqbal Mirchi, who earlier handled the narcotics business for the D-Company.
In the 1980s, Dola moved to Mumbai's Dongri, the base of the D-company in the 80s, and would soon keep the police busy. In 2018, his name cropped up in a case related to the seizure of fentanyl, an opioid, worth Rs 1,000 crore near the Mumbai airport – the biggest seizure of the drug until then. A year earlier, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence had arrested Dola over the smuggling of a consignment of gutka worth Rs 5.5 crore from Pipavav port in Gujarat.
An official said, 'Every time he was caught, he would manage to secure bail — he is aware of the loopholes in the NDPS Act. Some years ago, in Mumbai, he underwent a heart bypass surgery and had a visible scar on his chest. Every time he was arrested and taken into custody for interrogation, he would open his shirt to show his scar and tell us not to hit him or else he would die.'
In 2018, he fled the country and shifted his base to the UAE. The Naroctics Control Bureau had recently announced a bounty of Rs 1 lakh for information on Dola.
'He is shrewd and does not do drugs himself; only consumes alcohol. His son Taher is, however, heavily into drugs, which is why Dola did not hand over the complete operations to him and instead trusted his deputy Salem Shaikh alias Lavish,' an official said.
Police hope they can soon zero in on Lavish, an alias that has stuck given how the drug money allegedly funded his 'lavish lifestyle' of cars and branded clothes.
Lavish, said to be in his late twenties, was earlier a small-time worker for Dola but who has, over the past few years, risen through the ranks. Based out of Dubai, Lavish allegedly coordinates with members of the network in India.
For the Mumbai Police, it all began in February 2024, when their team arrested four men and seized 4 kg of mephedrone. During their police interrogation, the arrested men revealed that the drug was sourced from a factory in Irali village, Sangli district.
However, since the exact location was not known, a police team camped in the locality for several days until they zeroed in on the factory. The police then raided the factory and seized 122 kg of mephedrone along with the raw materials and chemicals used to manufacture the banned drug. Six persons were arrested.
Their probe revealed that it was Dola's nephew Mustafa Kubbawala, who shuttled between the UAE and his hometown Surat, who, through his contacts back home, would allegedly supply to factories the chemicals needed to make mephedrone, especially 2-bromopropane, a bromide.
That was an important breakthrough for the police, who found that Kubbawala, along with Dola's son Taher, were allegedly running the show from the UAE.
Moving to get Taher and Kubbawala deported from the UAE, the Mumbai Police's Crime Branch, through the CBI, sent the UAE authorities the details they sought, including a copy of the chargesheet translated from Marathi to Arabic. Kubbawala's deportation followed soon after.
Kubbawala allegedly told police that he got the bromide from his Surat-based contact Brijesh Morabia, who ran a fake pharma company in the city. Following this, the Crime Branch arrested Morabia in the last week of July, bringing the total arrests in the case to 14.