A 31-year-old key member of the Rohit Godara-Mahender Delana gang was arrested, and two kilograms of alleged Pakistani-origin heroin concealed in a car were recovered, police said.
The operation was a joint effort by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell and the Vadodara City crime branch of the Gujarat Police. Police estimated the value of the recovered contraband at around ₹ 12 crore in the international market.
“The recovery of the consignment of narcotic substance that allegedly originated from Pakistan and was smuggled into India, and the arrest of a gang member who was wanted by the Vadodara City crime branch in a ₹ 10-crore high-profile extortion case, have exposed a major narco-extortion module operated by Mahender Delana, a key associate of gangster Rohit Godara,” said deputy commissioner of police (Special Cell) Narra Chaitanya.
A case under Sections 21 and 25 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act was registered at the Special Cell police station. A resident of Rajasthan’s Churu district, Swami previously ran an agricultural commodity trading business, which incurred financial losses exceeding ₹ 50 lakh in 2022, according to officers. “The accused is in custody. Further investigation is ongoing to identify other operatives, trace hawala routes and arrest Delana and other associates,” he added.
Further investigation established that Swami was part of a syndicate that operated a multi-layered, dual-purpose network handling both extortion money collection and drug trafficking, Special Cell officers said. To clear his debts, he contacted Mahender Delana via Instagram, who subsequently lured him into the narco-extortion network on the promise of clearing his financial liabilities, the Special Cell said.
