How a Meow Meow seizure was tip of drug iceberg

An anonymous tip in February 2024 sent inspector Atmaji Sawant of unit 7 of the Mumbai Crime Branch on the trail of Parveen Bano Ghulam Shaikh, a 33-year-old burqa-wearing woman who lived in the slums of Kurla.

- Manish Kumar Pathak

She, Sawant was told, had emerged as one of the largest peddlers of mephedrone—Meow Meow in common parlance—in his jurisdiction. A little rooting around revealed that the woman had recently paid 240 lakh as down payment for a flat in the more upscale neighbourhood of Mahim. A few days later, as Parveen Bano got off a late-night local train from Mira Road, she was intercepted, and caught with 641 grams of mephedrone (aka MD).

But that tip, 17 months ago, led to a multi-agency crackdown on Maharashtra’s largest synthetic drug manufacturing cartel, and the extradition, in the last one month, of two members of the Dola family which controls the MD trade in the state, and enjoys a proximate relationship with Chhota Shakeel, according to investigators at the Narcotics Control Bureau.