The Criminal Court in Malé sentenced 43-year-old Ahmed Rasheed, of Always Happy House, to 25 years in prison after finding him guilty of trafficking cannabis into the Maldives.[1] The court also fined him 100,000 rufiyaa (about US$6,500), payable within a month.[1]
Rasheed had been arrested on 2 May 2012 at 7:15 pm after police acting on intelligence found him in the Sai Hotaa teashop, where he threw away a plastic can holding drugs when he saw the officers.[1][2] Eight more cans and a plastic bag of drugs turned up in his office locker; the court counted 1,152.51 grams of cannabis in total.[1]
The MV Reina network
Police said Rasheed’s arrest was part of a Drug Enforcement Department operation against a network built around 56-year-old Adhnan Moosa, a crewman of the cargo vessel MV Reina who had arrived from Tuticorin in India and was caught with a rubber packet of cannabis.[2] Officers found five cans of cannabis in Moosa’s bags and twelve more in his cabin, and arrested Rasheed and 26-year-old Hassan Sabir as alleged receivers; a fourth man was released after agreeing to cooperate.[2] Rasheed’s locker also held a large packet of heroin, a separate non-cannabis find left out of the cannabis figure.[2]