The Dongri police on Thursday arrested three accused, including two foreign nationals, who were allegedly found to be in possession of cocaine worth over ₹3 lakh. According to the Dongri police, the arrests were the result of a seven-day operation, during which a team worked on a tip-off received by police sub-inspector Prakash Dinkar.
“Following the tip-off, the team waited near Zakaria mosque for a week before nabbing the first accused, Rizwan Qureshi (38). They seized 34 gm of cocaine worth ₹1.02 lakh from him at 3 a.m. on Thursday. His interrogation led us to the other two accused, Saleh Hariri (47) and Dazi Msuku (40), who were picked up from Sayyed Guest House near Shalimar Hotel in Pydhonie. We seized 48 gm and 44 gm of cocaine respectively from them,” senior police inspector Sudhakar Kamble said.
The police said that the total value of the drugs seized from the trio came up to ₹3,78,000, and that they mostly peddled the drugs to hawkers and students in the area. The police also found that Mr. Hariri had been arrested in a similar case earlier, and had been released from prison a month ago after spending five years behind bars. The accused were charged under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. They were produced in court and have been remanded in police custody till May 14. The police are now interrogating the trio regarding the source of the drugs seized from them.
The arrests are the latest in a crackdown undertaken by the Dongri police to rein in the rising menace of drug peddling, especially by foreign nationals. Nigerians drug peddlers are known to get violent when the police try to arrest them. In April this year, the Dongri police had invoked the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against four Nigerian nationals who had a history of drug peddling and assaulting police personnel