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Three men, who were found guilty of smuggling 55,335 Captagon pills concealed in table tennis equipment, have appealed their five-year sentence at the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court.
On top of the jail time, the High Criminal Court last month fined the two Indians and one Saudi BD3,000 each, ruled to deport them after completing their sentence, and confiscated the illegal wares.
They took to the court to contest the ruling, and judges set April 28 as the date a decision will be made in their appeal.
The GDN earlier reported that the ‘poor man’s cocaine’ pills were expertly hidden in a package, containing table tennis rackets and ping pong balls, which arrived in Bahrain via air mail.
The balls were stuffed with narcotic tablets, which the appellants were planning to sell to a man who re-sold them for three times the original price.
However, Customs officers detected the smuggling attempt when the package underwent a routine x-ray upon arriving, and immediately handed over the case to the Interior Ministry’s Anti-Narcotics Directorate.
Police set up a sting operation to catch two of the appellants, aged 22 and 43, red-handed while receiving the package, and placed a decoy package for them to pick up.
During questioning by the Public Prosecution, one of the appellants admitted to his part in the smuggling scheme and said he acted as an agent for a drug network in India.
He confessed to being instructed by an India-based kingpin to sell the 55,335 pills to a Saudi man for 15,000 Saudi riyals (BD1,500). He also claimed that he was promised BD500 for the delivery.
Police set up a meeting with the Saudi to also catch him in the act, and the Indians and the 36-year-old Saudi appellant agreed to exchange the goods in the parking lot of a park.
As soon as the exchange was completed, the man, who came in a pick-up truck, was arrested on suspicion for his role in the smuggling.
He said he intended to resell the merchandise wholesale to another person in Bahrain for 50,000 Saudi riyals (BD5,000), more than three times the amount he purchased it for. Police found 15,000 Saudi Riyals (BD1,500) on this person, documents added.
He had been ordered to make the second sale by the same man that the Indian appellants received their orders from, the court heard.
However, authorities did not apprehend the fourth individual to whom the tens of thousands of pills were supposedly going to be sold.
Captagon is a mix of amphetamines, also known as the ‘poor man’s cocaine’, that drug dealers often target at affluent young people in the Gulf region.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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