Inside Karnataka’s biggest MDMA bust: How a street peddler led Mangaluru cops to Rs 75-cr stash

Mangaluru: Abigail Adonis* (30), wearing a white T-shirt loudly reading 'Utopia' in Hindi, and her friend Adonis Jabulile*, alias Bamba Fanta (31), in a sleeveless turtle-neck knit vest, landed at Bengaluru airport from Delhi in the early hours of March 14, with a delivery to make.

Abigail, claiming to be a textile businesswoman, and Bamba Fanta, who runs a street food stall in Delhi, had made this trip before, with their trolley bags in tow — 37 times in the past year, to be precise. But this time, their perfect world was set to crumble. They were under the scanner of Mangaluru Police’s Central Crime Branch (CCB).

The women of African origin left the airport in a taxi, unaware that a police team led by Inspector K M Rafiq was tailing them. After several stopovers and nearly six hours, they checked into a house in Neeladri Nagar in Electronics City.

Soon after, Rafiq’s team — sub-inspectors M V Sudeep, Sharanappa Bhandari, and Narendra, along with assistant sub-inspectors K V Mohan, Ram Poojary, Shenappa, and Sujan Shetty — raided the premises and seized 37.878 kg of MDMA.

At a press conference on Sunday, March 16, Mangaluru City Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal pegged the seizure at Rs 75 crore, calling it the highest-value drug haul by Karnataka Police to date.

At Rs 75 crore, he valued the seized MDMA at Rs 19,000 per gram. However, reports from previous police operations and market analyses suggest that street prices typically range between Rs 2,000 and Rs 6,500 per gram, depending on quality and region.

MDMA — a party drug known for its stimulant and hallucinogenic effects — goes by the street name Molly when sold in crystal or powdered form and Ecstasy when mixed with other substances and sold as pills or tablets.

The 37.878 kg of MDMA seized from the women was in crystal form, Mangaluru’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law & Order) Sidharth Goyal told Onmanorama.

To put the seizure in perspective, 0.5 grams of MDMA is considered a small quantity under the law. Possession of anything above 10 grams is classified as a commercial quantity, punishable by 10 to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 lakh under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Goyal said the women were using fake passports and visas. "So we are not sure if the names* they gave us are true," he said. Bamba Fanta told police she was from Agboville, which is in Ivory Coast, and Abigail Adonis claimed to be from Pretoria in South Africa. "But the evidence we have suggests both are from South Africa and have been living in Delhi for several years — Bamba since 2020 and Abigail since 2016," he said.

DCP Goyal said the women were active carriers, supplying MDMA to various Indian cities from Delhi. "Using the fake passports we seized, they had travelled 22 times to Mumbai and 37 times to Bengaluru,” he said. “They come every two weeks but return to Delhi the same day.”

Picking the trail from 15gm MDMA seizure
Commissioner Agrawal said his team made the largest MDMA bust in Karnataka’s history by picking up the trail left by a street peddler. On September 29, 2024, the CCB team in Mangaluru arrested Hyder Ali (51) with 15gm of MDMA from a lodge at Pumpwell Circle.

His questioning led them to Peter Ikedi Belonwu (38), a Nigerian national overstaying in Bengaluru on October 7, 2024.

When the CCB raided his flat in Dommasandra in Bengaluru, they found 6.248 kg of MDMA. They also found 35 ATM cards, 17 inactive SIMs, and passbooks from 10 bank accounts — indicating his possible involvement in online scams.

The MDMA recovered from Belonwu’s flat was in crystal form, stored in empty biscuits and chips packets. Agrawal said Belonwu would drop these packets in waste bins and share their locations with street peddlers. "Peter (Belonwu) is still in judicial custody. When we questioned him, he said he was getting supplies from the two women," Goyal said.

Mangaluru’s CCB investigated the women for six months before busting them. "The MDMA crystals seized from the women and Peter have similar textures. We will know if they are from the same source after lab reports," the officer said.

Agrawal said the women had been transporting drugs for 18 months, and wondered how they managed to evade detection at major airports for so long.

DCP Goyal said Mangaluru’s CCB was making an impact by going beyond street peddlers in the fight against drugs.

The officers said the investigation would continue to determine where the women sourced the MDMA from, and whether they were working for a more extensive network. "But it is clear we’ve hit a major supply chain not just to Mangaluru but to several Indian cities,” he said.