The Kochi Police has intensified the probe into the city’s narcotics network following the seizure of cocaine from a flat owned by controversial businessman Muhammad Nisham the other day even as Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala admitted that drug mafias with national and global connections were active in the State.
Amidst reports that the cocaine seizure of Saturday represented just the tip of the drugs iceberg of Kochi and Kerala, the police will on Monday examine the CCTV recordings collected from the apartment complex from where the contraband was recovered and four persons including a young Malayalam film actor and four young women were arrested for possessing cocaine.
The police have received information that several young people have been frequenting the flat owned by Nisham in the recent past and that most of them were strangers who belonged to the elite strata of the society and looked like film stars and models. It is suspected that so-called “smoke parties” had been taking place at the flat for quite some time.
Those arrested from the flat were Malayalam film actor Shine Tom Chacko (31), Blessy Sylvester (22), an assistant film director from Bangalore, Reshma Rangaswamy (26), a designer from Kozhikode, Tinsy Babu (25), a Bangalore-based model from Karunagappally and Kollam and Sneha Babu (25), a travel company owner belonging to Kanjirappally, Kottayam.
The police have learned that the cocaine seized from Nisham’s flat early Saturday morning was brought by Blessy and Reshma from Goa. The two young women had gone to Goa by December end and had returned to Kerala on January 3, they have learned. It is said that the drug was bought from a contraband vendor on Goa beach.
The CCTV recordings are expected to help the police to identify the people who had been visiting Nisham’s flat, currently leased out to Reshma as per her claim. The police are also trying to find out whether Nisham, who had on Thursday tried to murder a security guard by ramming his Hummer SUV into him, had any involvement in the activities in the flat.
The preliminary information the police have received from those arrested is that Goa is one of the major sourcing centres for drug abusers in Kerala. It is also said that a major part of high-intensity narcotics is coming to Kerala from South America, the main source of cocaine in the world, and several African countries.
The police had got clear indications of the expansion of the drugs network, increase in the number of abusers and the advent of a narcotic culture among the elite in Kochi as back as in July last year when they seized narcotic substances in raids held on a popular night club and a luxury boat during DJ parties.
A top Kochi police official said that the venues of such parties had obviously shifted to elite apartments after these incidents. “This is indeed safer for the abusers because the outside world need not know about what is going on in a flat. Also, it is almost impossible for us to raid such places even though we get information. You know why,” said the official.
At the same time, Home Minister Chennithala said in Kochi on Sunday that the drugs network operating in the State was deeply entrenched. The police had received clear information that mafias with national and global reach had been behind this, he said, adding, “But the Government is determined to destroy these lobbies. Drug peddler will be dealt with strongly.”