India, Sept. 9 -- The glitter of a corporate career gave way to the shadows of crime for 34-year-old Srinivas Vijay Murthy Voleti, a computer science graduate who abandoned a promising IT job to chase the illusion of easy wealth in the clandestine world of synthetic drugs. His ill-fated ambition spun a vast web of Mephedrone (MD) distribution across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), until it was unravelled last Saturday in a police sting operation.

The Mira Bhayandar-Vasai-Virar (MBVV) crime branch orchestrated a trap - a dummy order for 1.5 kilograms of Mephedrone, a stimulant often compared to cocaine and ecstasy. The sting led investigators straight to Voleti's chemical factory in Cherlapally, Hyderabad, where they uncovered a mas...