Palghar (Maharashtra), July 3 : The Maharashtra Police has cracked a major inter-state drug racket operating in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh, seizing drugs and related stuff valued at Rs 327.69 crore, and arresting 15 persons, officials said on Wednesday.

Mira Bhayander-Vasai Virar Commissioner of Police Madhukar Pandey told media persons that the racket, with mafia connections, also led to the seizure of four weapons and several live cartridges from one of the accused in Palghar.

The seizures include the drug mephedrone (MD), raw materials and other articles like vehicles from manufacturing dens in UP and Telangana, and cash from Gujarat.

The accused arrested comprise eight people from UP, three each from Telangana and Maharashtra, and one from Gujarat, with more arrests likely, Pandey said.

The investigations started on May 15 when the MBVV Crime Branch, Kashimira Police Unit 1 sleuths seized one kg MD valued at Rs 2 crore and nabbed two persons, both of Vasai town in Palghar, at a checkpost in Chenagaon (Thane). Their sustained interrogation led to unravelling the tentacles spread in other states where police teams were rushed to probe.

One of the teams raided a manufacturing den at Narsapur in Telangana on May 17, seized 103 gms MD valued at Rs 20.60 lakh and another 25 kg raw materials valued at Rs 25 crore, besides arresting two persons.

The questioning led the police to an associate in Mumbai's Goregaon suburb and the seizure of MD amounting to 71.10 gms valued at Rs 14.38 crore, plus the arrest of another person in Varanasi.

The combined probe continued with the dragnet then falling on a person at Padgha village in Thane, with the seizure of raw materials valued at nearly Rs 54,000. Pandey said that the probe teams have detected that one person from Mumbai ' who is still absconding ' had allegedly transferred funds for the manufacture of the drugs through an associate in Surat. The other person was nabbed from Surat along with Rs 10.90 lakh in cash, which was being remitted through the Indian traditional personal couriers called 'Angadiyas'.

Accordingly, the probe shifted to a couple of Angadiyas in south Mumbai from whom the police seized Rs 680,000 that was delivered to them by the Surat accused. The probe led to the detection of an MD manufacturing unit in UP's Jaunpur, from where the police seized 300 kg of raw materials worth Rs 300 crore and nabbed three more on June 25, followed by three more arrests from Lucknow on June 25/26.

They tipped the police about another associate operating from Nala Sopara in Palghar from whom the police teams recovered a revolver, 3 pistols and 33 bullets, Pandey said, adding that further probe is on.

The accused arrested in the entire scam over the past couple of months include Shoaib H. Memon and Nicholas L. Tritus (both from Vasai in Palghar), Dayanand M. Mudanar alias Daya and Nasir J. Shaikh alias Baba (both from Telangana), Ghanshyam R. Saroj (Varanasi), Mohamed S. Moin (Mumbai), Bharat S. Jadhav alias Babu (Thane), and Murtuza M. Kothari alias Zulfikar (Surat, Gujarat).

/IANS