Opposing the bail of four men accused of smuggling narcotics, the Mumbai Police told a court Thursday that the substance that was seized from them could have been used to make up to 38 million fentanyl tablets worth Rs 6,900 crore. A forensic report recently stated that the contraband seized from the accused, which they allegedly intended to smuggle into the United States, was not addictive opioid fentanyl, a painkiller widely abused there, as the police had claimed, but a chemical used to produce it. Advertising In December 2018, the Anti-Narcotics Cell of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch had seized 100 kg of a substance it claimed was fentanyl and arrested four people in the case. The police had claimed that the drug, valued at Rs 1,000 crore, was to be shipped to Mexico, from where it would be smuggled to the US. Shivdeep Lande, deputy commissioner of police, ANC, had said the main accused in the case was Salim Dola, who reportedly has ties with international drug cartels. But a forensic test report submitted in court last month revealed that the seized contraband was actually 1-Phenethyl-4-Piperidone, which is used in the production of fentanyl and is a controlled substance under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. On Thursday, while opposing a bail plea filed by the accused, the police said that the accused were in possession of a large amount of a controlled substance that was manufactured in a factory in Rajkot, Gujarat. The police said that the company, which was to export the substance to Mexico, had forged its Know Your Customer (KYC) details and Export-Import Codes. A senior police officer said that the accused were going to send the substance to Mexico by fraudulent means. Advertising In its report to the court, the police also relied on a seizure of 50 kg of the same chemical by the US Drug Enforcement Agency in the state of Massachusets in 2017. The DEA had then estimated that the amount of 1-Phenethyl-4-Piperidone would be sufficient to produce 19 million fentanyl pills valued at $570 million. The police argued the distribution and sale of 38 million fentanyl pills would be responsible for a lot of deaths globally. Advocate Ayaz Khan, representing the accused, argued that the case has turned on its head as a result of the forensic report. “This is now a case of a controlled substance as opposed to a narcotic substance, of being a case of preparation of a controlled substance. We will keep pressing for bail,” he said.

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