THE DRUG BUSINESS: HOW CRIMINALS BEAT THE LAW

A First Point: It does not look as if the problem of drugs will be
solved anytime soon. The supply and consumption are ever on the
increase, with younger and younger adolescents falling prey to
addiction and more individuals getting into the business of drug
distribution. And every person knows that the easiest way to destroy
a society is to get as many people as possible to become addicts, for
such addicts will never get rid of their addiction and go on
consuming for the rest of their lives.

In a way that is what all marketing is about: create a need and make
money by filling that need. The enemies of society or to be more
precise the enemies of the nation are lurking in dark corners, just
waiting to pounce on innocent youngsters to hook them into the drug circuit.

I am told that the drug dealers are targeting children from the State
Secondary Schools to make drug addicts out of them, and go on to use
these guileless youngsters to recruit other future drug addicts.

It is a vicious circle that that has to be broken and this can only
be done if the capacity of the dealers to meddle with our children
and other addicts is broken.

It is not an easy task - the drug dealers have all the resources,
monetary and otherwise, needed to protect themselves. After all, I am
informed that that the drug business involves a staggering sum of Rs
6,000,000,000 per annum, yes six billion rupees.

And we are not talking of gandia.

For the benefit of the public and especially of the police, I would
like to tell of one way in which I have heard they operate.

If four persons are arrested in a drug case, all four are brought to
Court. All of them are kept in custody pending their trial.

All four give their statements to the enquiring officers and one of
the accused may in his statement accept the whole charge and give a
full confession, and at the same time he implicates his three comrades.

According to his statement all four were part of a team that was
dealing in drugs.

The other three persons deny that they have ever been involved in the
business of drugs.

This is part of the strategy.

In Court, there is enough evidence to convict the person who has
confessed, and more often than not, he is convicted and sentenced to
a rather long prison sentence.

He starts serving his sentence, but his three friends are still in
custody, awaiting trial.

The one who has been convicted is lodged in the same prison as his
friends who are on remand awaiting trial.

They meet and talk, and everyone with some knowledge criminal
procedure knows that the first one is tried and convicted and then he
gives evidence against his friends.

And because he has already implicated his friends in his statement,
it will not be difficult for him to be in Court and just repeat what
he has said earlier in his statement.

But that would be too simple. The masquerade is made much more
complicated than that.

Somebody tells the jailed member that is no need for him to depone in
Court against his friends because he will not get any benefit out of
their conviction and imprisonment. And from here on, other persons
join in. Each of the accused parties is assigned a legal advisor of
his own to protect his interests.

These legal advisors, or some other barristers retained for the
purpose, go to prison to meet the convicted person who is prevailed
upon not to depone against his three colleagues.

These arrangements are not made just for the sake of friendship: big
money is exchanged.

The close relatives of the convicted person are promised and in fact
given the money promised and the convicted person refuses to depone
against his colleagues despite multiple attempts by the investigators
to get him to do so until at last the criminal case against the three
comrades in remand is dismissed for want of prosecution. The
prosecution has no choice but to proceed in that manner because it
has no evidence to produce in Court. The person convicted can come up
with a number of excuses, which we need not go into.

It is known to all concerned that the three who have got away
scot-free are in fact guilty of dealing in drugs, but unfortunately,
the witness against them has "played foul" so that the prosecution
and the case has fallen through.

What has been the role of the various legal advisors?

It would seem that in certain cases, though I must stress not in all
cases, the legal advisors have a very dirty role to play, and they do
it like true professionals. Members of the Bar know very well who
those legal experts are. But it would be better not to say more at this stage.

I was about to forget to draw attention to the fact that people in
prison have libre acces to telephones, apparently thanks to a few
corrupt prison officers and also a few corrupt police officers.

They can also phone up to any correspondent officially, but of this I
was not aware.

This is what my enquiry has revealed.

I would hope that the authorities conduct their own enquiry.

I am sure that a serious enquiry will throw the necessary light into
the murky business of dealing in drugs.

I know how hard it is for the police to deal with the drug barons.

More police officers, more facilities and more equipment should be
given to those who have the duty to clean up the country of drugs and
their peddlers.