Nigerian man absconding for 7 months held with drugs worth ₹56L

A Nigerian man, Henry Uwakwe, was arrested after six months on the run for a drug case involving ₹5.6 crore of mephedrone and additional amphetamine.

MUMBAI: A Nigerian man was arrested on Thursday after he had been absconding for over six months in a major drug case involving mephedrone (MD) worth ₹5.6 crore. The police also seized amphetamine valued at ₹56 lakh from his possession.

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According to the Mira-Bhayander-Vasai-Virar (MBVV) police crime branch , the accused, identified as Henry Uchenna Uwakwe, had been on the run since May when police busted an illegal MD manufacturing unit operating from a residential flat in Pragati Nagar, Nalasopara. While a woman was arrested during that raid, her partner, Uwakwe, had managed to escape.

After spending several months looking for the accused, on Wednesday, police sub-inspector Mukesh Pawar received a tip-off that he was hiding in a guesthouse in the Kalamb–Rajodi area. A police team then rushed to the location and arrested him.

During a search, the police recovered amphetamine worth approximately ₹56.12 lakh from the accused. Along with the earlier case against him, a fresh case has been registered against him at the Arnala Coastal police station under relevant provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

The police said that on May 17 this year the Tulinj police had raided a flat in Nalasopara and found a 26-year-old woman, identified as Rita Fati Kurebewei, in the flat. When interrogated, she admitted that she had rented the flat a year ago and used it to manufacture MD.

The police said that Kurebewei lived with her boyfriend, Uwakwe, in a neighbouring building. He allegedly taught her how to manufacture the drug and handled its distribution, and the couple would travel to Gujarat and Rajasthan every two months to procure raw materials. During the raid, police recovered high-grade MD worth over ₹5 crore from the flat.