The anti-narcotics cell of the Mumbai Police raided a manufacturing unit at Ankleshwar in Gujarat on Saturday and seized 513 kgs of the banned drug Mephedrone valued at a whopping Rs 1,026 crore in the international market, police said.

Mephedrone, also known as MD, is a synthetic psychotropic drug banned under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The owner of the mephedrone manufacturing unit, Giriraj Dixit, a post-graduate in Chemistry, was also arrested.

Police said Dixit and another co-accused had carried out experiments and perfected the formula for producing mephedrone.

The drug seizure was one of the biggest by the city police in recent times, PTI news agency cited Deputy Commissioner of Police (ANC) Datta Nalawade as saying.

The raid was linked to the seizure of 700 kgs of the drug worth Rs 1,400 crore from Nalasopara near Mumbai earlier this month.

Earlier this month, Mumbai police had seized mephedrone worth Rs 1,403 crore manufactured by the same gang from a godown in Maharashtra’s Nalasopara.

So far, a total of about Rs 2,046 crore worth of MD have been seized and 7 accused have been nabbed.