Special Task Force Cop Archana Nagar Nabs Serial Drug Peddler

Sub-inspector Archana Nagar of Madhya Pradesh police Special Task Force (STF) finally nabbed the infamous drug peddler Mohammad Ismail Khan in Mumbai’s Kalina area. Nagar was heading the case and for five days, she along with a Mumbai police team continued to shift through the area to track Khan who had sold mephedrone drug to drug peddlers in Bhopal.

She tracked him on social media and took his pictures from there. Then she also wore a burqa so that she doesn’t arouse any suspicion and finally caught him as he visited a polling booth in Kalina to cast his vote in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

Nagar’s first tip in the case was the fact that most mephedrone that reaches Bhopal comes from Mumbai, as per MP police STF. In November 2018, STF had nabbed peddlers Rizwan Ali and Shoaib Ahmed with 64gms of the drug in Bhopal.

“I found that Ali and Ahmed had sourced the drug from a Mumbai man (Khan) and paid him Rs 90,000 for it. A local money transfer agency was used to send the money,” Nagar told TOI. However, when Nagar reached out to the agency, they refused to cooperate. But she retrieved an employee’s WhatsApp chat with a peddler and found out Khan’s bank details which took them to a vague address in Kalina.

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“We went to locations where there was a chance of Khan landing up: A masjid, a restaurant, Kalina Dongar area, Kalina church area, and chawls in Shastri Nagar. But we could not find him. We were unaware that he had grown a beard,” said Nagar.

On April 25, Nagar and four other police officers reached Mumbai but since they didn’t know the city well, they asked auto-drivers about the location. They did not connect with the local police station as they didn’t want to access them without understanding the area themselves personally.

“We went to locations where there was a chance of Khan landing up: A masjid, a restaurant, Kalina Dongar area, Kalina church area, and chawls in Shastri Nagar. But we could not find him. We were unaware that he had grown a beard,” said Nagar.

The team contacted DCP Anil Kumbhare who then assigned a team from Vakola Police Station in Mumbai. The team received information around 3 pm. on April 29 that Khan would visit a polling station to vote. There were three booths in the area—domestic airport, Kalina church and at a BMC school. The team had two hours to track down Khan’s name in the voter list of these polling stations which is when they got know that his name appears in the list of the school. He was arrested at around 5 p.m. as soon as he came out of the polling booth after casting his vote.

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