Nine held in Maldives as 24.9 kg of hashish oil flown in from India
Maldives police and customs seized 24.9 kilos of hashish oil, along with 4.76 kilos of heroin, in four operations over a September 2016 weekend, most of it carried in from India on passenger flights. The Criminal Court remanded the eight suspects it counted to police custody, although police said five men, two women and a 16-year-old boy were arrested.
🇲🇻 Velana International Airport and Hulhumalé, Maldives
Maldives police and customs arrested five men, two women and a 16-year-old boy
on drug-smuggling charges after four operations over a weekend that brought
olive-oil-like hashish oil and heroin from India.[1]Police said the
operations found 24.9 kilos of hashish oil and 4.76 kilos of heroin in total.[1]The Criminal Court had remanded the eight suspects it counted to police
custody, although the police arrest tally includes nine people.[1]
On a Friday, customs officers at the airport found 7.27 kilos of hashish oil and
1.09 kilos of heroin in the luggage of a 31-year-old woman who had flown in from
Trivandrum on a Maldivian airline flight.[1]After questioning her, police
arrested a 21-year-old man and the 16-year-old boy, both of whom had criminal
records.[1]The next day, customs found 10 kilos of hashish oil and 1.98 kilos
of heroin in the luggage of a 28-year-old man who arrived on an Air India flight
from Bangalore.[1]Police also arrested a man who came to the airport to
collect that consignment and later a third suspect in Hulhumalé, the capital’s
suburb.[1]
Raids on two apartments where two of the suspects lived turned up a further 7.07
kilos of hashish oil and 1.09 kg of heroin, and police arrested two more people
there, including a woman.[1]The newspaper called the four busts together the
largest haul of the year so far.[1]Maldives Independent noted that police and
courts have a history of releasing suspected traffickers and that convictions in
high-profile trafficking cases are rare.[1]
Photos and video
Photograph published with the article and captioned 'More than 20kg of hashish oil and heroin, smuggled from India, seized'; it shows the substance seized from the smuggling operations, though no credit or photographer was given and the article does not say when or where it was taken.Photo details
The article gives arrest figures that do not agree: five men, two women and a minor are nine people, but the court is said to have remanded 'eights' suspects.
No separate incident date is given; the account says 'Friday' and 'the following day' over the weekend before its 4 October 2016 publication, and 30 September 2016 is used as the incident date.
The reported 24.9 kilos of hashish oil and 4.76 kilos of heroin do not add up to the 28.76 kilos stated for all drugs seized; the report uses the separately stated hashish oil weight for cannabis.
No street value, charges, case numbers or court outcome were reported for the eight or nine suspects.
No second account of the event could be opened, so all facts rest on one Maldivian news report.
The airport's name, Velana International Airport, is not given in the article; the place is recorded from the airport and Hulhumalé arrests described.
The page photograph carries no credit and the article does not say when or where it was taken.
The article mentions the June 2016 29 kg heroin bust, the March 2014 Iranian-boat heroin case and the July Colombo and Sri Lanka arrests only as context; they are separate events left out of this report.
Maldives Customs seized 3.2 kg of cannabis from a suspicious postal package inspected on Saturday 15 August 2026. No arrests were reported, and Customs warned the public against collecting suspicious parcels for others.
Customs officers inspecting sea freight on 25 December 2025 found more than 40 kg of hashish oil hidden in bottles labelled as chocolate syrup. Police estimated the street value at over MVR 30 million and arrested two men, aged 47 and 57, on 26 and 27 December; both were remanded for five days. Hashish oil is a cannabis concentrate and is treated as a Schedule 1 drug.
Operation Alimagu began on 13 November 2025 with about 500 officers raiding 110 places on 39 islands; police said 110 people were arrested on the first day. By late December they had searched 166 locations and nine vessels, arrested 193 people, and seized 30.63 kg of drugs and 182 bottles of alcohol.
Officers found more than 15 kg of cannabis in the luggage of a 44-year-old Malaysian man who arrived on flight EK656 on 27 July 2024. Police put the street value at MVR 12.3 million and called it the largest single cannabis seizure of the year; a controlled delivery led to a second arrest, of a 41-year-old Malaysian man.
