4 members of drug peddlers’ gang arrested

Four more drug peddlers associated with the notorious Shahi Mahatma gang have been arrested from various locations, the police said here today.

Those arrested have been identified as Dinesh Kumar, a resident of Khalai village in Tikkar tehsil, Shimla district; Vinay of Pujarli village in Rohru; Jagdeep Singh of Samata village, Rohru; and Abhimanyu of Pujarli village in Rohru.

The police had on December 16 arrested three accused with 10.83 gm ‘chitta’ (heroin) from Deha in Shimla district. On the basis of inputs, the police were able to identify the accused and all were arrested on Friday.

Shimla Superintendent of Police (SP) Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi said further investigation was under way. He said the accused were involved in drug peddling activities and had connections with the Shahi Mahatma gang. In September, the police had arrested a Jammu and Kashmir native with 468 gm heroin at Khadapathar in Shimla district, which led to the arrest of Shahi Negi alias Shahi Mahatma, the kingpin of the drug racket.

He ran an illicit drug racket in the areas of upper Shimla mainly Rohru, Chirgaon, Jubbal, Kotkhai, etc, where he was running an organised drug trafficking racket.

Investigation revealed that Mahatma who was running the racket for the past three to four years also had connections with interstate drug peddlers in Delhi.

To sell the contraband, he had created a WhatsApp group in which he used to add potential buyers after proper verification through the Aadhaar details.

Only after the verification, he would add the buyer to the group. Information about the place where the contraband would be delivered was shared and the buyer was told to make the payment via UPI.

The kingpin also used to operate through various middlemen and kept different mobile phones and changed his contact numbers and locations frequently to avoid being caught by the police.