African drug cartels connecting with Kochi youth to supply MDMA and LSD

KOCHI: African drug cartels have tightened their hold on the city and the suburbs and started directly associating with the district’s youths to supply chemical drugs, mainly MDMA and LSD.
Kochi City DANSAF (District Anti-Narcotic Special Action Force) has been able to establish the direct link of African cartels with local drug peddlers after Aluva natives Mohammed Shahad, 22, and Ahmed Yasim, 21, were nabbed for possessing 19gm of MDMA worth Rs 1 lakh on Monday, March 2.
Police officials said African suppliers, mainly Nigerians, used to earlier push MDMA and LSD into the state via drug cartels based out of Kasaragod, Kannur and Kozhikode.

“Our probe revealed the Nigerians were in direct contact with the nabbed youths for supplying drugs. It’s learnt more youths are travelling to Goa and Bengaluru from Kochi to establish contact with the Nigerian suppliers,” said an officer.

The duo was nabbed from a rented house at Edappally. The records showed they had been to Bengaluru.
“Avoiding middlemen benefits suppliers and buyers. Earlier, Nigerians used to deal only in large quantities of drugs. However, with students becoming buyers, they have started to deal in small amounts,” said the officer.

A Ananthalal, Ernakulam South CI (additional charge), who is handling the case, said the police have sought custody of the youths who were presented before the court on Tuesday.“We have specific inputs regarding the activities of drug peddling rackets in the city and will be able to get more information about the African cartels after interrogating the youths,” he said.

97 Africans held for drug trafficking in 3 years
A Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) report had exposed the rising involvement of African nationals in India’s drug trade. It said 97 African nationals were arrested from south Indian states between January 2014 and June 2017. The most arrests wer made in Goa (55), followed by Karnataka (20) and Tamil Nadu (10). In Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, six African nationals each were arrested. It was found that African nationals jailed for drug trafficking used the jail time to establish a strong network with local inmates. Once out, they get back into drug trafficking with the help of the local contacts.