Drugs: Evil nexus and Faustian bargain

Tuesday 18th April, 2023

The Sri Lanka Navy is at war even during peacetime! It is leading the country’s war on drugs from the front. It has seized another haul of heroin in the southern seas. A fishing craft which was intercepted, while transporting about 175 kilos of ‘hell dust’, was brought to Galle yesterday. The street value of the stock of heroin is believed to be as much as Rs 3.5 billion. Six suspects have also been taken into custody. Let the Navy be praised for its successful drug bust, and the officers and men involved in the high-risk operation deserve to be rewarded. The best reward for them, in our book, is to ensure that their selfless efforts to rid the country of narcotics will reach fruition.

Navy Commander Vice Admiral Priyantha Perera, addressing the media in Galle, revealed that the Navy and the Coast Guard had seized more than 3,000 kilos of dangerous drugs including heroin, ICE (crystal methamphetamine), and Kerala cannabis, so far this year. Among the drugs the Navy took into custody last year were 1,364 kilos of heroin, 148 kilos of ICE, and 5,731 kilos of Kerala cannabis, according to media reports. This alone is proof of the enormity of the scourge of narcotics, and there is reason to believe that we have been scratching the surface of the problem, and much more remains to be done to neutralise the netherworld of drugs and crime.

A large number of fishing craft have been intercepted with narcotics during the past several years, and the need for stepping up naval operations to nab drug dealers in the garb of fishers cannot be overstated. If the Navy and the Coast Guard need more facilities to take on the narcotic Mafia, they should be given what they require, and, more importantly, everything possible must be done to keep their morale high.

The news about the latest seizure of heroin has come a few weeks after the release by the Western Province High Court of five suspects arrested and remanded for allegedly possessing 196.98 kilos of heroin taken into custody in the seas off Trincomalee in April 2019. Expressing their concern about the shoddy manner in which investigations had been conducted, the learned judges said that statements by the police were contradictory. The charges against the suspects had not been proved, they said.

The intrepid personnel of the Navy and the Coast Guard become hugely demoralised when their efforts to bring drug barons to justice come a cropper owing to corruption and inefficiency in the police and other state institutions, not to mention political interference.

Upon receiving the news about the latest drug bust, corrupt elements in the police, the Government Analyst’s Department, etc., and some unscrupulous lawyers in a Faustian embrace with the Napoleons of Crime must have sprung into action, to let the suspects taken into custody off the hook. They will not leave any stone unturned in their efforts to open an escape route for the suspects and help cover their tracks. Drug barons have massive slush funds, which enable them to have corrupt cops, politicians, and state officials on a string.

There have been numerous instances where drug samples sent to the Government Analyst’s Department for testing turned out to be kurakkan flour thanks to tampering. The task of testing narcotic samples therefore should not be left solely to local institutions; serious thought should be given to involving foreign labs in the testing process as a solution to the problem of the hirelings of narcotic cartels tampering with drug samples here. Otherwise, the six suspects currently in custody, too, are likely to walk free, cocking a snook at the Navy and the judiciary.

We suggest that a committee of independent experts be appointed to monitor investigations into high-profile drug busts so that there will be no room left for the manipulation of the legal process. Progress made in such probes should be made public from time to time, where possible, so as to ensure transparency. It is no use condemning the police and others for scuttling efforts to have drug dealers punished after cases against criminals collapse. They and their drug bosses must be prevented from circumventing the law. That will be half the battle in breaking the back of the narcotic problem.