Ahmedabad: A local court here has awarded over 10 years jail term and Rs 2 lakh fine to each of the five accused including Kishor B Rathod son of former MLA Bhavsinh Rathod in connection with the recovery of drugs making raw material (Ephedrine) from a factory near here in April 2016.
The other four accused were Bharatsinh R Kathia, Punit R Shringi, Jay Mukhi and Manoj T Jain.

An ADJ court in the sessions court here awarded the punishments.

On January 9, 2017 the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Gujarat Police had nabbed Kishorsinh Rathod from a town of Kota district in neighbouring Rajasthan. He had been hiding at various places including the Chambal area in Madhya Pradesh for a long time.

Over 1300 kg of the narcotics substance worth 268 crore, brought from a pharmaceutical company in Solapur (Maharashtra) was kept in the factory in Kanbha area close to Kathlal GIDC and was seized in April 2016. In June that year another accused Manoj Tejram Jain was nabbed from Mumbai while Jay alias Jay Mukhi , a native of Vadodara who lived in Mumbai and was a member of international drug racket, was nabbed from Gorakhpur in UP bordering Nepal.

Two other accused of the case including the owner of the factory — MD Steel — at Vahelal in Kanbha area of Ahmedabad where the drug was kept, Narendra Kacha and one Punit Shrigi who had brought it from a drug factory of Solapur in Maharashtra, were already under arrest while Kishor and one Bharat were nabbed later.

The ephedrine, seized by a joint team of ATS and Crime Branch was brought from a pharmaceutical factory at Solapur in Maharashtra for processing and converting in to party drugs such as Glass, ICE and TINA.

Kishore, who is the main accused in the case had taken the factory from where the drug was recovered on a rental, He had allegedly held meetings with foreign drug smugglers in Dubai. Jay had also accompanied him. The party drugs were to be smuggled to Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Poland and other countries and supplied to various parts of India.

DeshGujarat