Representational.
Ahmedabad: From manufacturing units on the outskirts of Vadodara city, the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) seized a massive cache of the banned MD drug worth around Rs 500 crores. The seizure happened during a raid, PTI reported.
Apart from the above, the state police have seized cash, drugs, liquor and freebies worth over Rs 290 crores so far in poll-bound Gujarat, which is ten times that of the recoveries made during the 2017 assembly election here.
Gujarat is going for two-phase elections on December 1 and 5.
During the Vadodara raid, they arrested five people from Nadiad and Vadodara on Tuesday night. A criminal case is being registered in ATS Police Station, Ahmedabad, under relevant sections of the NDPS Act, 1985. Police said that the preliminary investigations suggested that the arrestees were making the MD drug under the guise of manufacturing chemicals legally.
In the raid operation rolled out in Vadodara (Rural) and Vadodara City, the raid team identified two mephedrone drug manufacturing units and unearthed about 143 kg of mephedrone (synthetic drug).
The Election Commission said through various enforcement agencies, record seizures have occurred during the election process in the state. Operations are still in progress, and complete will be made available once the operation is completed, the EC said.
The total seizures in the 2017 Gujarat assembly election were Rs 27.21 crores. As on November 29, total seizures stood at Rs 290.24 crores -- 10.66 times of seizures in 2017. Over four lakh litres of liquor worth Rs 14.88 crores have been recovered from the dry state, EC data said.
In August this year, the ATS seized more than 200 kilograms of party drug mephedrone worth nearly Rs 1,000 crores from a warehouse near Vadodara city.