Thaindian News

Panaji, March 17 (IANS) The police in Goa — primarily dependent on tourism — have no list of drug traffickers operating in the coastal state, home minister Ravi Naik told the state assembly Thursday.

Naik said this in a written reply during question hour, even though two Israeli drug dealers and seven police officials were arrested during last year for alleged links to the drug mafia.

Ravi Naik’s son Roy too has been linked to the drug mafia by the international media and the opposition.

Naik replied in a terse ‘No sir’ to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Vasudev Gaonkar’s query as to whether “the police has any list of people involved in drug trafficking”.

To another question, asking Naik to spell out the names and number of drug peddlers ‘operative’ in the state, Naik said an answer to such a query could not be ‘formulated’.

“No person can be said to be ‘operative’ as crime of drug peddling is a clandestine activity and there are no open traders of drugs,” he said.

“As such, giving the number of such peddlers operative in the state with their names and number of Indians and foreigners is not legally possible,” Naik said.

Several policemen as well as two Israeli drug dealers were arrested — and subsequently released — after a Swedish model and a former girlfriend of a drug dealer had uploaded incriminating videos on Youtube.

The model, Lucky Farmhouse, had also said in an interview to an Israeli newspaper that Naik’s son had links with Yaniv Benaim alias Atala.

Fiona Mackeown, mother of slain British teenager Scarlett Keeling had also blamed Roy Naik of being linked to drug trade during the trial into her daughter’s alleged sexual assault-cum-death.