Mumbai: Niranjan Jayantilal Shah, a hawala operator of the 90s and a close associate of securities scam kingpin Harshad Mehta, who had turned to dealing in narcotics and was wanted by various agencies, was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) from Munirka in New Delhi on Tuesday. Shah was produced before a local court which remanded him in ATS custody till August 25.
Deputy Inspector General of Police (ATS) Shivdeep Lande has confirmed the arrest.
Shah’s name cropped after the Juhu unit of the ATS arrested one Sohel Yusuf Memon with 5.56 kilograms of mephedrone worth Rs 2.53 crore on March 17, 2021. During questioning, Sohel told ATS officers that he had procured the drug from Shah.
Shah, however, had fled from Mumbai, and ATS officers were trying to track him down. “Shah kept on changing his location, and his appearance and travelled to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka,” said an officer who led a covert operation to arrest Shah.
“We recently found that he was staying at Munirka in Delhi, and was staying there as a poor man in a single room rented in someone else’s name. We followed the lead and arrested him on Tuesday,” said the officer.
Shah has a history of criminal activities. “He was involved in the securities scam that rocked the country in the 90s and was a close associate of Harshad Mehta. He is also an accused in a case registered with the Economic Offences Wing, Mumbai,” added the officer.
Shah, who had been in jail for more than six years, had developed local contacts to get into the illegal drug business of supplying mephedrone, the ATS officers added.
Further investigation revealed that Shah was allegedly a known drug trafficker in the records of various police stations in Mumbai, Delhi, the Anti-Narcotics Cell, Mumbai, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), New Delhi, and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).
Who is Niranjan Jayantilal Shah?
Niranjan Shah, a resident of Juhu, was in the business of money laundering, and was a close associate of Harshad Mehta and his brothers. The Mehtas would allegedly launder money through Shah. Soon after the securities scam came to light, Shah had fled to Dubai. But tragedy struck when two 20-year-olds from Dubai, Manish Dhaka and Rajesh Dhaka, who allegedly had a dispute with Shah, decided to kidnap Shah’s eight-year-old son Vatsal for a ransom of Rs 15 crore. Vatsal, who had been living with Shah’s mother after the latter separated from his wife Roma, was kidnapped from outside his house Janaki Kutir in Juhu. But the Dhakas’ plan failed after they overdosed Vatsal with chloroform in a flat at Kandivli where the child was being held and he died. The brothers buried Vatsal’s body beneath the kitchen platform.
Shah was later extradited from Dubai and arrested by the NCB on April 8, 2003, while trying to export a consignment of 565 kilograms of hashish worth Rs 5.65 crore to the United States of America. Shah had joined hands with one Jitendra Panchal, who was part of an international drug syndicate.
He was once again arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on December 15, 2011, near Kamal Cinema at Safdarganj Enclave in Delhi, with 100 kilograms of pseudoephedrine. Two months after being released on bail, Shah was once again arrested by the NCB after the agency seized 80.5 kilograms of ephedrine and 4.5 kilograms of methamphetamine from two cars belonging to him. The contraband was to be delivered to someone who was flying to the United States of America via Delhi.
