Drugs: Scarlette case a tip of the iceberg

Scarlette Eden Keening’s rape and murder has opened a virtual Pandora’s box as the media attention, local, national and international have brought the seedy underside of the Goan tourist trade and the underlying drug trade under spotlight in sharp contrast to the usual singing praises of Goa’s pristine coastline as well as its thriving nightlife.

It has also shifted the focus to the new ‘alternate’ lifestyle that is in vogue among the ‘rough round the edges’ foreign tourists today, who come from a financial middle class background but are with a manual labour background. Workmen like plumbers, carpenters or general maintenance people are highly prized and paid well in the west. These are the people seen in Goa and are known to indulge in this type of lifestyle, say insiders in the know.

While the Tourism Minister has gone on record about the drug scene, the Inspector General of Police, Mr Kishen Kumar does not deny that drugs are freely available in the state and argues that this is why almost Rs 50 lakh of drugs have been seized this year and that is not including the latest ganja seizure at Porvorim the other day.

He also agrees that the seizures are a tip of the iceberg.
Reportedly even with the most sophisticated equipment used by the US authorities the seizures still account for a miniscule amount of the total drugs trafficked.

Goa had around 2.5 million visitors last year, including 3,80,000 foreigners, of whom 1,60,000 were British.

Goa has evolved from a place where drugs were sold at rave parties to a transit point for drugs to and from various European countries as well as becoming a centre for production of party drugs.

Police sources say that drugs like ecstasy, charas, LSD, cocaine, ganja or marijuana or grass as it is popularly known, MDMA, a popular party drug, which goes for around Rs 400 per tablet and heroin are common today, though today heroin does not have the same popularity that it enjoyed in the 70s and 80s.

Sources say the charas and ganja come from the Kullu-Manali region and Nepal while opium comes from Rajasthan. Cocaine comes from Latin America and is transported mostly by ‘mules’ or drug carriers, who are minors many-a-times, either by air or sea to Delhi or Mumbai and then the consignment finds its way to Goa and MDMA or LSD comes from Europe and Charas goes to Europe from Goa.

If charas costs Rs 100 per gm in Goa its cost is hundreds of times more there and so it is profitable to send and difficult to detect unless they have specific information, say police.

Some locals say that the drugs trade is not organised, or that shacks are involved while others say that it is controlled by a small handful of local men. However, they deny that foreign women are taken advantage of.

Proof of minors being used in the drug trade was the arrest of an Italian minor girl who was caught at the Dabolim airport when she was about to board an Indian Airlines Mumbai to Auckland flight last year. This arrest exposed a Goa-based Israeli drug racket that was using this method to transport drugs out of the country.

Courtesy:navahindtimes.com

Complete artical HERE