The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has taken into custody drug lord Salim Ismail Dola, an alleged international drug trafficker wanted in the Sindhrot mephedrone factory case in Vadodara, in which drugs worth ₹ 438.64 crore were seized, it said in a press release.
The ATS listed an alleged record spanning nearly three decades. He was taken into custody on October 31, following legal procedure, nearly four years after the factory was raided. He was arrested in Istanbul on April 25, 2026, under an Interpol Red Notice issued at India’s request in March 2024. The Narcotics Control Bureau brought him back to India on April 28 under ‘Operation Global-Hunt’. Officials said he was lodged in a Mumbai jail when the Gujarat ATS took him into custody on October 31. Ten people were arrested, and an FIR was registered under Sections 8(C), 22(C) and 29 of the NDPS Act. Dola was arrested at Mumbai airport in 1998 with about 40 kg of Mandrax, and by the Mumbai Anti-Narcotics Cell in 2013 with about 79 kg of charas. He was named in a Directorate of Revenue Intelligence case in 2017 involving gutkha worth ₹ 5.5 crore smuggled from Gujarat to Kuwait, and in a ₹ 1,000-crore fentanyl case in 2018. Since 2022, his name has surfaced in around ten more cases across Mumbai, Thane, Vasai, Bhopal and Gujarat, the ATS said. These cases were registered by police stations, the NCB, the DRI and Mumbai’s crime branch, and invoke the NDPS Act, the Arms Act, provisions on forgery and cheating, and, in 2025, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
Officials said Soumil Pathak, one of the arrested accused, came into contact with Dola in jail, and the investigation found that both were involved in manufacturing and selling narcotics. The Sindhrot consignment, the ATS said, was delivered in Mumbai to Aiman Musa Sheikh alias Ayan Khan, a Dola associate. The release also said the Enforcement Directorate is investigating his finances, properties and alleged money laundering.
