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 ₹40 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.

Last month Taher Dola, 33, was extradited from Dubai in the UAE and on July 11 the Central Bureau of Investigation got custody of his cousin Mustafa Kubbawala, 44, also from the UAE, under the mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT). The hunt is now on for the patriarch of the family Salim Dola, 57. On July 9, Mumbai newspapers carried an advertisement from the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) offering a reward of ₹1 lakh to anyone with information on his whereabouts.

A week prior to Kubbawala's arrest, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announced in the Assembly that his government would be amending the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) to bring drug peddlers under its purview, doubling down on his priority to crack down on the drugs trade. Central government statistics from 2019 to 2021 show the state has the second highest number of drug cases registered in the country after Uttar Pradesh.