Lucknow bizman in Albania jail for 'drug trafficking'

LUCKNOW: In a suspected case of 'mistaken identity', a 31-year-old Lucknow resident was arrested last Friday (Oct 21) in Albanian capital Tirana on charges of drug trafficking.
The Albanian police reportedly acted in coordination with US's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to arrest Nitin Mishra. He has been remanded in police custody pending his possible extradition to the USA.
His shellshocked family which stays in Rajajipuram area of the city told TOI that he was into promotion of local readymade garments abroad through digital marketing and was in Albania on a business trip. He had gone to Tirana on October 12 via Dubai and was slated to come back on October 18.
"He was the sole breadwinner of the family," said his inconsolable father Vasudev Mishra, who claimed it was Nitin's first trip abroad. He was in touch with the family while in Albania but got incommunicado after October 18, the day he was supposed to return. A concerned family was trying its best to find his whereabouts when Nitin called up on October 21 to inform his father about his detention. But the call got disconnected before he could give any detail.
They finally came to know through an Albanian English newspaper on October 22 that he had been arrested in Rinas, 20 km from Tirana, by the local police for 'drug trafficking'. Nitin's family didn't get any formal communication from Albanian authorities or police about his arrest. The family claims that it didn't get any communication from the Indian embassy in Albania, so it could be possible that the embassy officials also were not informed about the arrest.
The news report about Mishra published on October 22 mentioned that the US agency had cited two red corner notices and two American arrest warrants against him for the action. 'He was declared on an international search for the criminal work of trafficking in narcotics, carried out in the form of the criminal group', the newspaper quoted the Albanian police.
According to the police, the arrest was the result of coordination between 'State Police and the American DEA, with the aim of extradition to the USA, for the criminal offence of drug trafficking. "This was the first strike that the DEA office made in Albania," the statement said.
“We got information about his arrest on October 21 when he called to inform us, but the call got disconnected. Thereafter, we roped in a local lawyer Vivek Rai who suggested we should talk to UK-based constitutional expert and human rights lawyer Harjot Singh. We were not informed about the case nor the charges by the Albanian authorities. We got to know through a local Albanian newspaper about the charges,” said Vasudev.
“My son who studied throughout in Lucknow never had a brawl with anybody in school. After passing out Class XII in 2009 he went to Delhi to study web-designing and digital marketing. Later, in 2011 he took a job at a call-center there but returned to Lucknow in 2018 after my wife Chhavi was diagnosed with cancer,” Mishra told TOI. He said that his son was the only hope for the family. “My fast food business closed during the pandemic. My wife is suffering from cancer,” he said.
Lawyer Harjot Singh, who is now pursuing the case, told TOI over phone that they would first be writing to the European court of human rights about the case as without any intimation to Indian authorities about charges of ‘drug peddling’ an Indian citizen cannot be arrested. Singh also said that they would also write to the Prime Minister Office and the Ministry of External Affairs for intervention in the case.
“We have also put up our case with the Albanian authorities and lodged a complaint that Nitin was not provided counsel and also not informed about the charges leveled,” Singh said. “He must get a fair representation in the court of law,” he added.
Singh, who has represented many cases of human rights in courts of UK, told TOI that Nitin’s case seems to be of mistaken identity or stolen credentials. “Prima facie, it appears that his credentials were stolen and he was framed in a fake case,” he said.