AHMEDABAD: Gujarat Crime Branch has arrested Dharmesh Chunara, a drug smuggler who escaped from a Nepal jail during violent Gen Z protests.
Chunara was intercepted and arrested by Nepali agencies at Kathmandu airport after he landed on a Bangkok–Nepal flight carrying 13 kilograms of hybrid ganja, a consignment valued at nearly Rs 13 crore.
The arrest landed him behind bars in Bhadra Jail, Kathmandu, under Nepal’s narcotics laws.
But September 2025 rewrote that script. As Nepal was rocked by the Gen Z protest movement, mobs vandalised Bhadra Jail, smashing gates and triggering a mass jailbreak. In the chaos, several prisoners vanished among them Indian nationals. When the Nepal government later released a list of escapees, one name rang alarm bells in Gujarat: Dharmesh Chunara of Ahmedabad. What followed was a silent hunt. Based on inputs from central and Nepali agencies, Gujarat Police began tracking possible movements.
Technical analysis and local intelligence narrowed the trail to Ahmedabad. The final clue came when officers learnt Chunara was hiding at the house of his mother-in-law in Ahmedabad area. The Crime Branch moved in and arrested him.
The Gujarat Police SOG, in a detailed press note stated that although no fresh criminal case had been registered against Chunara in Ahmedabad, his role in international drug smuggling is under active scrutiny.
Officers are probing whether earlier consignments made it into India and whether he was part of a larger cross-border narcotics network. Officials also revealed that Chunara was not alone. After the Nepal jailbreak, authorities shared details of multiple Indian escapees two of them from Gujarat, including one from Surat. With Chunara now in custody, efforts are on to trace the others.
Police said Chunara will be handed over to central agencies, after which formal procedures will begin to extradite him back to Nepal to face trial.