Ambitious Punjabi film producer supplied drugs for funds, nabbed

Mumbai: The Anti Narcotics Cell (ANC) of the Mumbai Police caught hold of a Punjabi film producer on Saturday who is allegedly involved in an international drug racket. Yadvinder Basrao, aka Pinky Basrao, had allegedly smuggled 5 kilograms of Mephodrone (popularly known as ‘meow meow’) worth 1.5 Cr to two people whom he mentioned during his interrogation and were taken into custody.

The police revealed that Basrao has taken a few other names from the film industry who are associated with the drug syndicate.

On Saturday, the ANC arrested the owner of an international courier agency, Sunil Dhutiya and Vicky Nadar in Andheri and recovered 1 kilo of meow meow from them. During the interrogation Nadar and Dhutiya revealed that they have been involved in the business for quite sometime now and supplied meow meow to many people in Andheri area and it was Basrao who Dhutiya had received around 5 kilos of meow meow from. The Deputy Commissioner of Police (ANC), Shivdeep Lande, had formed a special team to catch Basrao red-handed who had fled to Chennai by then. According to police, the producer had been to Delhi earlier this week.

Basrao, who was living out of his bag, was nabbed from a hotel and remanded in police custody till March 14.  

In order to escape police, the producer was living out of his bag and had no house of his own in any part of the country. “He does not have a house anywhere in the country,” a police officer reportedly told a leading daily.

The officer also revealed that the producer’s dream of funding two more films got the better of him and he gave in to the lure. “He has told us that he was working on a film based on a religious epic and there was shortage of funds. He was in talks with another director to make a movie. He claimed that to fund these movies he started supplying narcotics,” the officer reportedly said.

Before turning into a Producer, Basrao was an RTO agent who moved to Canada and returned to India a few years later. In 2008, a film named ‘Yaariyan’, Gurdas Mann and Om Puri, was produced by Basrao under the banner Pinky Basrao Films.