The Hindu : State emerging as a hub of heroin smuggling

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 19, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

State emerging as a hub of heroin smuggling

By G. Anand

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JAN. 18. There is mounting evidence that Kerala is emerging as a hub of heroin smuggling to the Gulf and the Maldives.

Various enforcement agencies, including the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB), are probing the background of more than 12 Malayalis who were arrested in the Gulf in 2003 on charges of smuggling heroin. As many as eight of them were held in Dubai alone last year.

According to official sources, the accused are mostly youth hailing from Kozhikode, Malappuram and Kasaragod districts. The agencies are processing Interpol requests seeking more background on the accused, sources said.

The arrested include those who have travelled to the Gulf on employment and visit visas. The charges range from smuggling of heroin to peddling and possession of drug-laced cigarettes. Many of the youth face death penalty in the countries that have detained them.

Official sources said the growing involvement of Malayalis in the drug trade could be traced back to 1996 when 126 persons were executed in Saudi Arabia alone on drug charges.

Many of those executed were Keralites. But in most cases enforcement agencies here could not ascertain their real identity or background because most of those caught on charges of smuggling heroin had used fake passports for their travel to the Gulf. In 2000, seven Malayalis were executed in Saudi Arabia alone for heroin smuggling, official sources said.

An enforcement official said it was possible that some of those arrested in the Gulf could be `innocent possessors' tricked into carrying the drug. Others could have smuggled the drug into the Gulf for a free employment visa.

According to official sources, a network of `Gulf Malayalis' with strong links in Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Kasaragod and Malappuram are suspected to be behind the present racket.

These groups are also suspected to have links with certain travel and recruitment agents in Kerala and Maharashtra. Sources said many of the `heroin carriers' arrested in the Gulf had travelled from Mumbai airport.

In a telling instance this year, the NCB intercepted a native of Kozhikode, Nazar (40), on January 10, as he was about to board a flight to Bahrain from Mumbai. Nazar was charged with possessing 5.3 kg of heroin allegedly concealed in the false bottom of his suitcase.

Sources said that Nazar had boarded the Netravati Express to Mumbai from Kozhikode station on January 9. Officials said that Nazar was supposed to disembark at Bahrain and travel by road to Damam `with the drug'. Another Malayali, Abdul Razak, was arrested from a lodge in Andheri West in connection with the seizure.

In 2003 alone, the Regional Intelligence Unit (RIU) of the NCB here had seized more than 21 kg of heroin valued at Rs. 21 crore. The Air Intelligence Unit of the Air Customs and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) have also made several heroin seizures in Kerala.

In August last year, the NCB seized two kg of heroin from Thiruvananthapuram airport. Two air-passengers bound for Riyadh were arrested in connection with the seizure.

During the August-November period, several persons were arrested from the Thiruvananthapuram airport by the Air Customs and NCB on charges of smuggling heroin to Maldives.

Enforcement agencies are learnt to be probing a `highly secretive group among the members of the alumni of a leading Government school in the city' in connection with the heroin smuggling operations to Maldives.

Officials are also probing the `Kerala links' of a Sri Lankan national, Muhammad Fazreen, who was arrested by the NCB in April 2003 in connection with the seizure of 12.5 kg of heroin, which was found buried in a desolate beach near Kuttapally in Kanyakumari district.

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