Guj: Man held for setting up meth lab in Surat

Surat: The 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, an official said.

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.

”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 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.

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 said. 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.