The Madhya Pradesh Police have issued a lookout circular (LOC) for a Ashish Kumar Shailesh Mehta and Shivani Mehta, a Mumbai couple who masterminded a Rs 300 crore home-based drug distribution racket and have intriguingly vanished from the police radar in Mumbai and Khaniyadhan in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district on Sunday. They lived in an opulent, now-abandoned and locked flat in Mumbai’s Goregaon neighbourhood. It is believed that they fled with a huge sum of ₹174 crores from their drug money after police summoned them to question them.
The matter came to light after a suspected drug dealer from Mira Road (Thane), 39-year-old Nissar Zubair Khan, was apprehended two weeks ago with Mephedrone worth Rs 17 lakh. During questioning, he named the duo. He also accused them of participating in a number of illegal operations involving drug trafficking, Ponzi schemes and scams related to digital currencies.
During the investigation, Khan claimed that he is just a courier man for the woman and her husband in Mumbai. He claimed that he did not know what was inside the packet when it was handed over to him by the couple. He told police that the couple used to call him to their residence at Oberoi Esquire in Goregaon East to collect parcels. For every consignment, he would be given a new mobile phone and a new SIM card, and the delivery address to deliver the parcel to. After delivering the parcel to the address, he was asked to discard the phone and the SIM.
Nissar Zubair Khan said that the packet of drugs that police found with him was given to him on June 6 by Ashish Kumar Shailesh Mehta after calling him to their residence, and it was to be delivered at an address in Chanderi town of Madhya Pradesh.
Based on his statement, a team of Madhya Pradesh police visited the couple’s house on 11 June, along with Arrey police in Mumbai. They handed them summons asking to appear before the MP police for questioning on June 13. However, Ashish Kumar Shailesh Mehta and Shivani Mehta failed to appear before the police on that day. After that Mumbai police commissioner contacted them and asked them to cooperate with MP Police in the probe, but they still didn’t appear. Covering the story, a Mid-Day team even visited the residence, but they refused to talk.
Afterwards, on June 16, an eight-person squad from the Madhya Pradesh Police travelled to Mumbai, but by then they had fled their residence. When they visited the house with Aarey police, they found the main door locked. The driver told them that they left him the previous day. The phone number that Ashish Mehta gave them was also found switched off.
Police say that the couple were aware of the police visit and therefore they fled beforehand. According to police sources, the couple transferred a whopping Rs 174 crore to multiple accounts after they were summoned, and are believed to have left the country before the lookout notice was issued.
Police found the bank account details from the mobile phone records, and found that Mehta has been constantly transferring money from his account. On Thursday, he transferred around Rs 70 lakh and on Friday Rs 26 lakh from this account to various other accounts. The initial balance in the account was ₹300 crore, which came down to ₹126 crore, showing that they transferred ₹174 crore to various accounts. As per official accounts, these additional accounts may now be assessed throughout the investigation.
The lawyer of the couple has, however, claimed that his clients were being set up and asked for additional time to provide the police with all the information they required.
An anti-narcotics team from the Mumbai Police Crime Branch paid a visit to the Oberoi Esquire building on Saturday morning where the couple was staying, but neither the neighbours nor the security personnel had much information. Meanwhile, a notice summoning them for questioning by or before Sunday was posted on their door by the Madhya Pradesh Police. Along with that, the MP police also issued a lookout notice for the couple.
Shivani Mehta and her husband Ashish Kumar Shailesh Mehta, both entrepreneurs and aficionados for digital money, are charged with conducting a drug distribution network from their residence in an affluent high-rise in Goregaon. It was also found that they provided false names, numbers and other details to the residential society.
