Gujarat ATS takes custody of drug lord Salim Dola in ₹438 crore mephedrone seizure case

The ATS said it will question Dola to establish his precise role in the Sindhrot case, identify the source of raw materials and trace money flows.

The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has taken into custody drug lord Salim Ismail Dola, an alleged international drug trafficker wanted in the Sindhrot mephedrone factory case in Vadodara, in which drugs worth ₹438.64 crore were seized, it said in a press release.

He was taken into custody on October 31, following legal procedure, nearly four years after the factory was raided.

He was arrested in Istanbul on April 25, 2026, under an Interpol Red Notice issued at India’s request in March 2024. The Narcotics Control Bureau brought him back to India on April 28 under ‘Operation Global-Hunt’. Officials said he was lodged in a Mumbai jail when the Gujarat ATS took him into custody on October 31.

Dola was among the key absconders in the case, which began on December 1, 2022, when the ATS raided an illegal factory in Sindhrot, on the outskirts of Vadodara. Officials said 87.728 kg of mephedrone (MD), worth around ₹438.64 crore on the international market, was seized.

Ten people were arrested, and an FIR was registered under Sections 8(C), 22(C) and 29 of the NDPS Act.

Officials said Soumil Pathak, one of the arrested accused, came into contact with Dola in jail, and the investigation found that both were involved in manufacturing and selling narcotics. The Sindhrot consignment, the ATS said, was delivered in Mumbai to Aiman Musa Sheikh alias Ayan Khan, a Dola associate.

The ATS said Dola lived in Dubai on an Indian passport and used mobile numbers registered in the UAE and Kenya. It added that he had worked for Iqbal Mirchi in the 1990s, transporting drugs when Mirchi was active in the international Mandrax trade.

Dola and his associates later established their own network and hid narcotics in containers carrying legally exported goods and set up dummy companies in destination countries to receive them, it said.

The ATS listed an alleged record spanning nearly three decades. Dola was arrested at Mumbai airport in 1998 with about 40 kg of Mandrax, and by the Mumbai Anti-Narcotics Cell in 2013 with about 79 kg of charas. He was named in a Directorate of Revenue Intelligence case in 2017 involving gutkha worth ₹5.5 crore smuggled from Gujarat to Kuwait, and in a ₹1,000-crore fentanyl case in 2018.

Since 2022, his name has surfaced in around ten more cases across Mumbai, Thane, Vasai, Bhopal and Gujarat, the ATS said. These cases were registered by police stations, the NCB, the DRI and Mumbai’s crime branch, and invoke the NDPS Act, the Arms Act, provisions on forgery and cheating, and, in 2025, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). The release also said the Enforcement Directorate is investigating his finances, properties and alleged money laundering.

The ATS said it will question Dola to establish his precise role in the Sindhrot case, identify the source of raw materials and trace money flows, other associates, and the network’s interstate and international links.