MUMBAI: A prison guard has been arrested for allegedly lending his cell phone to Faiyaz Shaikh, a close associate of drug kingpin Salim Dola, so that he could run his narcotics operation from the Solapur district jail. Shaikh is lodged in prison in connection with the massive mephedrone (MD) haul in Satara, worth ₹115 crore, in December last year.
Police said the guard allowed Shaikh to use his phone to make calls to Dubai and to drug peddlers. The guard, Balu Anna Chavan, was arrested by the Ghatkopar unit of the Mumbai crime branch and, after being produced before a local court, was remanded to police custody until February 21.
Shaikh has been lodged in the Solapur district jail since 2024, but police realised he was still in touch with drug peddlers. They noticed that, despite being behind bars, he was coordinating his drug network and was also in touch with his son, Fahad, based in Dubai. According to police, Shaikh, a Vasai resident, has also been involved in supplying narcotic drugs to various South Asian countries.
On December 13 last year, the Ghatkopar unit of the crime branch raided a factory operating from Jawali tehsil in Satara district and seized 7.5kg of solid MD, 38kg of liquid MD, and large quantities of raw material used in its production. The total value of the seized contraband was estimated at ₹115 crore.
The MD bust was a breakthrough for the Mumbai police but the drug lord at the centre of the mephedrone network, Salim Dola, continues to elude law-enforcement agencies. Once a small-time peddler from Dongri in Mumbai, Dola became a key figure in gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s network. Arrested many times, he is said to have had a knack for securing bail. Dolas is now one of the most wanted names on the narcotics circuit, both In India and overseas, his reach extending to cartels in South Africa and Mexico.
While he is believed to be in Turkiye, his son Taher and nephew Mustafa Mohammad Kubbawala were arrested by the Mumbai police last year, after they were deported from the UAE. A few months later, in October, police secured custody of Salim Sohail Shaikh, alias Lavish, a lynchpin in Dolas’ operations, after he was deported from Dubai.
While these arrests may be too close for comfort, Dolas runs his network like a well-oiled machine. It trains new recruits, funds drug factories across India, sells the drugs, and routes the money back to Dola via hawala channels.
Dolas’ associate Faiyaz Shaik, arrested in the Satara MD bust case, has confessed to operating from jail by using the mobile phone of the jail guard to coordinate with his contacts and drug peddlers. He is among ten others arrested in the case, the eleventh being prison guard Chavan.