The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Mah. Act No. XLI of 2025), which received the Governor’s assent on July 30, 2025, introduces a key change to the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA).
The amendment substitutes clause (e) of Section 2(1) of the principal Act, thereby expanding the definition of “organised crime.” The revised definition now includes not only activities involving violence, intimidation, or coercion for pecuniary or other undue advantages but also explicitly covers large-scale narcotics operations.
Under the new clause:
• Organised crime encompasses continuing unlawful activities carried out by individuals either alone or as part of a syndicate, using violence, threats, coercion, or unlawful means for economic gain or to promote insurgency.
• Crucially, it also includes the cultivation, production, manufacture, possession, sale, purchase, transport, or storage of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances in commercial quantities (as notified under the NDPS Act, 1985) done in contravention of the law, with the objective of economic or other undue advantage.