Not everybody is as iconic as Walter White from Breaking Bad. Gujarat police on Friday arrested a man who had allegedly set up a laboratory to manufacture the banned drug methamphetamine (meth) at his office in Sarthana area of Gujarat’s Surat city. The arrest has come days after the Surat police had nabbed one Pravin Bishnoi, a native of Jalore in Rajasthan, with 58 gm of meth worth Rs 5.58 lakh. Investigations have revealed that Bishnoi had come to Surat on November 9 to deliver the contraband to one Jaimin Savani in Sarthana, Surat commissioner of police Ajay Tomar said. A police team raided Savani’s office in Rajvir Complex in Sarthana and seized glass beakers, stove and glass connectors, and some raw materials such as liquid methanol, he said.
“We nabbed Savani from his native place in Bhavnagar district and brought him here. He confessed that he had become a drug addict and had started selling narcotics to make money. Since he found the drug trade lucrative, he decided to manufacture methamphetamine and had set up a mini-laboratory in his office,” the official told PTI.
Savani had claimed that he had learnt some techniques of drug-making by watching YouTube videos and drug dealers from Rajasthan had also provided him guidance, the official added. As the accused had just started his experiments in the laboratory, he had not been successful in making the contraband as yet, Tomar said, adding that Savani had bought the raw material online through an e-commerce platform. According to a Times of India report, Savani had gotten addicted to MD during the lockdown along with his friends. A native of Bhavnagar, Savani had started an office in search of employment but after the global pandemic he planned to make the drug at the office.