There is no mafia or organised crime syndicates selling drugs: CM
As often as you watch your weekend movie, there is one successful drug raid in Goa, latest Government statistics reveal. Coming in the face of protestations by the State’s top police officials as well as the State Chief Minister, who is also the Home Minister, that there is no drug mafia or organised crime syndicates selling the drugs, the statistics have shown over fifty successful raids each year over the last three years.
The statistics show that in 2011, 53 cases were registered under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) act, 55 were registered in 2012 and in 2013 50 cases were registered under the same act. The news comes even as the Goa Police Anti-Narcotics Division netted yet another catch arresting one Punjab native Vinod Sharma and claimed to have seized 73 grams of apphetamines from him worth Rs 3.7 lakh.
In all 158 cases were registered from 2011-2013, which amounts to almost one case booked every week. Over the last three years, the period of the statistics show that a bulk of those arrested are Indian nationals with 119 arrested, followed by Nigerian nationalities, 34 of whom were arrested.
They were arrested either for possession or attempting to sell the narcotics both natural drugs like hashish and marijuana to exotic synthetic drugs like lSD and MDMA. Foreign nationals make up one in every four persons arrested under the act.
How deeply foreigners were involved in the Goa drug trade and their clout became apparent after a Nigerian national was murdered, allegedly by a rival gang of local boys.
In retaliation, the Nigerians who claimed to be at the receiving end of several cases where the police were siding the locals, stopped a hearse van and threw the body on the road holding traffic at a arterial road leading into the State capital.
Israelis, British, Portuguese nationals, and alleged drug peddlers from other African nationalities were also arrested in course of the raids, records show. The biggest drug haul in the last three years, turned out to be a Rs. 2.05 crore worth seizure of MDMA (weighing 4.140 kgs) in October last year along with the arrest of a British National, Gary Baird.
The trial is still on. The smallest seizure incidentally was a seizure of marijuana worth Rs. 80 from a local resident, 20-year-old Amit Pujari, in April 2013.
If one wanted any link between the EDM festivals and parties that are popular in Goa, and drugs, police records show that three disc jockeys or DJs as they are popularly called were arrested for possession of drugs.
British national and DJ Allan Bainbridge (48) was arrested by the anti-narcotics cell (ANC) for possession of drugs like Ecstasy and lSD worth Rs. 21 lakh at Anjuna. Bainbridge was already facing trial for possession of hashish in the past.
In 2013, Japanese DJ Yasuji Hinagata was arrested for possessing charas and lSD worth Rs. 8 lakh. In 2012, a Chennai-based sound engineering student was arrested by the Goa Police for possession of a stash of various psychotropic drugs worth Rs. 8 lakh.
The seizures, their quantities and the regularity with which they happen, flies in the face of repeated public denials by chief minister Manohar Parrikar and Director General of Police (DGP) T.N. Mohan, both of whom said there were no drug mafias operating in in Goa.
The Goa Police can seemingly, raid and seize drugs at will.
“There are drugs in Goa... It is still my opinion that Goa is not Mexico. Goa does not have a mafia or a lawlessness which is there is those places,” Mohan claimed earlier in May.
Parrikar told the recently concluded monsoon session of the Goa legislative that: “there are no organized gangs which specialize in distribution of drugs in the state”.
The Congress, which incidently also faced allegations of shielding drug peddlers, during its tenure of government, has questioned the honesty of the government and the police force in cracking down on the menace.
“It is a slap on the face of those honest police officers and people who are fighting against the drug mafia in Goa,” says Congress spokesperson Sunil Kauthankar.
A legislative committee report authored by the committee set up by the subsequent legislative assembly, has indicted former home minister Ravi Naik and his son Roy for their alleged links to the Israeli drug mafia operating in Goa.
The same report had also called former DGP Kishen Kumar the “kingpin” far as providing police protection to the drug mafia.