Meet Mumbai’s new NCB zonal director Amit Ghawate

Mumbai: Amit Ghawate, a 2008 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer was recently announced as successor to Sameer Wankhede, the controversial former zonal director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), whose term ended in December 2021

Mumbai: Amit Ghawate, a 2008 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer was recently announced as successor to Sameer Wankhede, the controversial former zonal director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), whose term ended in December 2021.

Ghawate was part of the team which initially investigated Rhea Chakraborty’s role in actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death by suicide in June 2020. (HT Photo)

A resident of Pune, the 42-year-old was trained as an architect at the Bharatiya Kala Prasarini Sabha’s college of architecture in Pune. He cleared the UPSC examination in 2008 and was selected to join the IRS.

Ghawate, whose parent cadre is customs and central excise department (C and CE), took charge on April 18, and interim director Vijendra Chowdhary reverted to his sole charge of heading NCB (Indore). Ghawate comes to Mumbai after heading NCB Bengaluru, which he joined as zonal director in June 2020 and was on deputation till November 2024.

Ghawate’s work in Bengaluru — the zone covers three southern states: Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — was well-received. He busted syndicates of drug lords whose connections ran all the way up to Myanmar and other neighbouring countries. He was also part of other high-profile cases related to drug seizures.

In February 2022, he was part of a team comprising state police, drug disposal committee, and the special enforcement bureau in Andhra Pradesh which destroyed 200,000 kg of marijuana, grown on a 10,000-acre field in Anakapalli in Vishakhapatnam district. Called Operation Parivartan, the teams worked for four months to bust the syndicate.

In another more publicised case, Ghawate was also responsible for busting a drug trafficking gang of seven, pretending to be Swiggy delivery agents who distributed drugs during the lockdown in Bengaluru and Shivamogga. “During the lockdown, I along with my team had busted a gang of Swiggy delivery boys who would deliver drugs along with food parcels to their clients,” the officer said.

In June last year, Ghawate’s team cracked down on spurious medicine racket, in which the banned drug Alprazolam was being manufactured by chemical experts under the banner Indu Drugs Pvt Ltd, based out of Bidar. The gang would lease factories for short periods of time to manufacture the drug and distribute it across India. On June 25, the agency seized around 100 kg Alprazolam a mini-truck that was heading to Kolar from Bidar in Karnataka.

“The Bangalore team is the best. We busted drug syndicates in the high sea where 300 kg of high-quality heroin along with several AK-47s were seized. We have seized drugs at several ports like Vizhinjam port, Kochi and Madurai ports. During one of the operations we arrested a Sri Lankan drug lord who was staying in Chennai for the past 20 years and running a garment shop,” Gawate said.

Mumbai connect

Ghawate was part of the team which initially investigated Rhea Chakraborty’s role in actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death by suicide in June 2020. He spent nearly a month in Mumbai and questioned several people involved, after the 34-year-old actor was found dead in his Bandra flat on June 14. The post-mortem report concluded that he had died by suicide. However, the Central Bureau of Investigation began to probe the matter after the Supreme Court directed it to do so. The Enforcement Directorate also joined the probe, during which it was found that drugs were being supplied to the actor and his friend, Rhea Chakraborty. As a result NCB also got involved.

His first posting was in Ratnagiri from 2010 to 2012, where he held the charge of assistant commissioner (customs) in Kolhapur. He was posted at the Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence in Mumbai between 2014 and 2017 following which he was promoted to head the Special Intelligence Investigation Branch (SIIB) till 2019.

Ghawate also worked at the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), which comes under the Union ministry of corporate affairs, and investigates corporate frauds — Ghawate was in charge of the Hyderabad and Kolkata zones.