Mumbai: Drug lord and Dawood aide Salim Dola, who was deported from Turkey on Tuesday, had acquired a Bulgarian passport under the fake name Hamza and was planning to use it to escape that country, officials said.
Indian agencies have made photocopies of the Bulgarian passport.
“He was trapped in Turkiye because he had come to the country in 2024 on an Indian passport. He could not travel as an Indian citizen using his real name because a Red Corner notice was issued against him two years ago,” an official said, as reported by Hindustan Times.
Dola is now being questioned in Mumbai by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). He is said to have told his interrogators that after escaping India in 2018, he had reached the UAE. He travelled to Turkey for a holiday in 2024 and remained trapped there for the past two years.
“His family joined him in the UAE after escaping from India. In March 2024, while they went to Istanbul on a holiday, a Red Corner Notice was issued against him. This made it impossible for him to leave the country with the Indian passport. His family members returned, while he had to stay in Turkey. That is why he kept on changing locations in that country and acquired another passport,” the official said.
He added that Dola had moved just two months ago to a house in Beylikduzu, Istanbul, from where Turkish authorities finally caught him. Indian agencies had provided the Turkish administration with the man’s new location and identity.
“He is a key link to many clandestine synthetic drug laboratories busted in different states such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Gujarat, Rajasthan. He has over the years dealt in everything from Mandrax to marijuana, fentanyl, and mephedrone. He would invest in whichever drug was more profitable,” the official added.
His son Taher and nephew Mohammed Kubbawala were deported from the UAE last year.
A resident of Mumbai, Dola was brought to India on Tuesday brought to India under ‘Operation Global-Hunt’, in a development Union home minister Amit Shah termed as a “major breakthrough”. Under this Operation, the NCB, along with central agencies, is identifying Indians involved in drug smuggling in the country, who have settled abroad.
“Over the years, Dola established a major transnational drug trafficking syndicate spanning a number of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. His two-decade long criminal antecedents include direct involvement in cases involving multiple high-value seizures of Heroin, Charas, Mephedrone, Mandrax and Methamphetamine in Maharashtra and Gujarat,” The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement.
Court records reveal that Dola was first arrested on July 28, 1998, at the Sahar airport in Mumbai (now known as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport), while trying to smuggle Mandrax tablets. In 2017, he was again arrested by the DRI after the agency seized nearly 100000 gutka pouches worth over Rs 5 crore before they could be smuggled to Kuwait via sea. He then got the moniker of Gutka King. The consignment was seized at the Pipavav port in Gujarat and a godown in the national capital.
In 2024, the Mumbai police also found his involvement in a case related to the seizure of around 126kg of mephedrone and traced the supply chain from Maharashtra to Turkey and Dubai. People arrested in this case had named him as the person behind the drug manufacturing and supply chain.
Dola’s son, Tahir Salim Dola, who was named in this case, was extradited from the UAE by CBI last year.
Dola was out on bail in 2018 when he fled the country and travelled to the UAE.