Panjim-based hotelier held for sheltering accused
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
NEW DELHI: The Punjab Police has unearthed an international drug racket run by Punjab drug baron Jagdish Singh Bhola which has also spread its tentacles to Goa and Mumbai, with the arrest of a hotelier and property dealer in Panjim and the owner of six pharmaceutical factories in Mumbai manufacturing synthetic drug called “ice”.
The hotelier identified as Ravi Chauhan was arrested by the Punjab Police from Panjim on the charges of sheltering Bhola and other drug suppliers evading arrest and he has been taken on a 4-day police remand from a Patiala court to question his links with various drug lords. The Patiala police has also nabbed one Dr Sanjay Goel and seized chemicals worth crores of rupees from his Mumbai pharmaceutical factories.
Bhola, an Arjuna awardee wrestler and the dismissed deputy superintendent of police in Punjab, was allegedly running a Rs 700-crore drug racket with links to Canada, North America and Europe through NRIs. He went underground after the Narcotics Control Board, which had arrested him earlier in 2009, last March unearthed the massive drug racket that also included supply of opium and heroin. He was finally nabbed on November 11 and since then 52 persons have been arrested while the Interpol’s help is sought to arrest 36 NRIs.
While on the run, Bhola had taken shelter in Panjim for a while. He wanted to invest the drug money in the hotel business and showed a keen interest in buying a hotel for Rs 16 crore on the Baga beach in Goa.
“Chauhan not only sheltered drug peddlers in Goa but also helped them to buy properties and invest in casinos, besides providing luxuries to his high-profile clients,” said a police officer in Patiala investigating the massive drug racket.
Bhola allegedly diverted the raw materials meant for medicinal purposes to the underground factories as also the authorised pharmaceutical factories to produce the synthetic drugs, including “ice”, that were supplied in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Goa and Mumbai.
He had also developed a well-oiled machinery to supply these drugs to markets in Europe, Canada and the US and had hired specialists from Vietnam and China,
many of whom were NRIs, to package the drugs with special wraps to evade detection by sniffer dogs and X-ray scanners at airports and cargo ports.
In its raids in Delhi with the help of Delhi Police, the Punjab Police not only recovered drugs and 26 passports but also seized some machines used in making fake visa and other travel documents. Punjab’s counter-intelligence unit investigating Bhola’s drug ring is continuing raids in different parts of the country.
