Maha ATS nabs ex-aide of Harshad Mehta in drugs case from Delhi

Mumbai, Aug 18 (IANS) In a major catch, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested Niranjan Shah, an ex-aide of late scamster 'Big Bull' Harshad Mehta, in a case involving an international drug syndicate, from Delhi, officials said on Wednesday.

A Maharashtra ATS team, after painstaking efforts of around six months and chasing him across six states, finally zeroed in on Shah in Delhi late on Tuesday and nabbed him.

Shah, 65, a former partner of Mehta who created havoc in stock markets in the early 1990s, was produced before a designated court and sent to ATS custody till August 25.

An erstwhile player in the stock market, Shah was wanted after his name cropped during investigations into a narcotics case cracked by the ATS Juhu police station on March 17, 2021.

The ATS Juhu had arrested Sohel Yusuf Memon and recovered 5.65 kg mephedrone, valued around Rs 2.53 crore, and it emerged that Shah had supplied the contraband, but had disappeared afterwards.

Additional DGP, ATS, Vineet Kumar Agarwal, DIG Shivdeep Lande, and SP Sohail Sharma had formed a special team of ATS Juhu comprising Police Inspector Dnyaneshwar with APIs Sachin Patil, Dashrath Vitkar, Sagar Kunjir, and others to track down Shah.

However, Shah had already sneaked out of Mumbai and was moving around in disguises across the country with his trail found in Karnataka, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and finally Delhi, said the officials.

"He was also constantly changing his looks. It had become a great challenge to trace and arrest him," said an ATS official.

After nearly six months with the ATS team moving around half a dozen states, they finally tracked him to Munirka village in Delhi, where he was living as an ordinary, poor man, in a single room hired in somebody else' name and nabbed him.

The ATS said that besides the Juhu ATS, Shah is wanted by several agencies like Anti-Narcotics Cell and Economic Offences Wing, Mumbai, the Narcotics Control Bureau and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, New Delhi, and several police stations in both the cities.

He had been earlier arrested by the DRI, New Delhi in 2011, by NCB Mumbai in 2014, but was released on bail, and investigators said his links were found with peddlers engaged in smuggling large quantities of drugs both into and outside the country.