A 28 year old Maldivian was sentenced to 10 years in prison after an Indian court found him guilty of heroin smuggling.
The Bangalore Mirror, identified the Maldivian as Ajouth Mohammed who was nabbed with two Indians with 500 grams of heroin in 2012.
The seized heroin was estimated to be worth over Rs 60 lakh.
Banwarilal and Chetan Saxena were in touch with a heroin cartel in Maldives and Ajouth from Maldives was the designated courier to smuggle the drug from India to the island nation, according to the media report.
The online paper quoted investigators saying that Banwarilal from Rajasthan and Chetan Saxena from Madhya Pradesh were involved in heroin smuggling in north India and have been arrested in the past under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act in Bhopal and Rajasthan.
The two Indians were reportedly trying to use Ajouth as a courier and smuggle the narcotic consignment from Bangalore when the investigators raided them at Srinidhi lodge based on a tip off in 2012.
Ajouth was found to be part of a heroin peddling racket in Maldives and had cited medical treatment as his official purpose of visit to India.
The court has also slapped a penalty of Rs 10,000 on the trio and have ordered that they will have to serve one more year in prison if they fail to pay the penalty, the media report said.
“ They were in the city for sometime and was waiting for the right opportunity to smuggle the drug out when our team nabbed them,” said a police official.
Ajouth had reportedly arrived in the city a couple of weeks before his arrest and later made contact with his two associates. Chetan Saxena and Banwarilal were reportedly involved in multiple drug trafficking cases in the past across Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
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