PANJIM: Already facing a tough time in the tourism and hospitality sector, Brand Goa is taking a further beating with increasing cases of cultivation of narcotics. With police raids unearthing home-grown drugs from various hideouts, mainly in the northern coastal belt, such cases indicate that the trend in Goa is shifting to it being a “drug-producing State”.
What’s interesting or rather a coincidence is majority of these cases has the involvement of Russians.
In continuing with the drive of arrests of persons growing drugs in their rented homes and compounds, a Pernem police team on Monday raided a rented house of two Russians and seized cannabis plants.
The accused, on a five-year tourist visa, had arrived in Goa in February 2020 and preferred to stay back even as large-scale repatriation of stranded foreign nationals was undertaken by the Indian government during the COVID-19 induced lockdown.
“On their arrival, they booked the house in Mandrem on rent. Their sole purpose was to avail a space to cultivate cannabis while remaining out of police sight. Local and non-Goan drug peddlers would purchase the illegal substance from them,” a senior officer said.
The case could blow the lid off the drug nexus with a few names of drug traffickers allegedly emerging in the ongoing probe. Declining to give further details, a senior police officer said, “We have stepped up our action and intelligence mechanisms, especially in the coastal belt.”
The incident comes nearly seven months after another premises at Morjim was raided for operating as a cannabis nursery. This case too saw Russian links with the arrest of one Vasily Rakhmanov. The rented house had vast space inside and on the terrace exclusively for cultivating cannabis using greenhouse effect.
This isn’t it! In February 2019, a group of four Russians were arrested as they allegedly grew cannabis in a rented apartment in Mandrem and indulged in robbing ATM machines.
The international criminals, identified as Ilia Alexandrovich Schennikov, Radik Vafin, Evengii Zakharin and Igor Markov, dealt with smuggling drugs, mainly ganja, ecstasy and cocaine. It was Schennikov who was first caught for growing marijuana.
Many such cases have been reported in recent years. It was in December 2018 that a Russian couple, Viacheslar Terekhin and Anna Asharova, were held for allegedly growing cannabis in their rented apartment in Anjuna. Cannabis plants, drugs and other items worth Rs 15 lakh were seized from the couple’s residential apartment.
In October 2018, Crime Branch had arrested another foreigner Christopher Michael Pattison for growing cannabis in the garden area of his rented residence at Porvorim. The seized material was worth around Rs 4 lakh.
In the same year in July, Crime Branch had swopped down on Russian national Maxim Moskichev for allegedly growing marijuana in a rented bungalow while his fellow national Artem Seregin was caught in possession of drugs worth Rs 10 lakh.
Sources said that areas in North Goa especially Siolim, Anjuna and Vagator and Mandrem, Morjim and Arambol beaches have emerged as new hubs for cultivating cannabis and marijuana also being added to the illicit growing of drugs.
About two years ago, Anjuna Police had arrested an Austrian national Christian Koller for setting up a chemical laboratory for manufacturing synthetic narcotic drugs in a rented apartment and seized drugs and raw material worth Rs one crore from his flat.
