Maldives police arrested Assistant Attorney General Ismail Wisham and his wife Hana Waheed in a late-night raid on an alcohol and drug abuse charge, seizing beer cans and six cellophane packets of hash oil from their apartment. The couple were placed under five days’ house arrest; Wisham’s colleagues said the arrest felt targeted.
Maldives police arrested Assistant Attorney General Ismail Wisham and his wife,
Hana Waheed, at 11.30pm in a late-night raid on an alcohol and drug abuse charge
after an intelligence tip-off.[1]
The couple were transferred to five days of house arrest; Hana Waheed is a
senior public prosecutor at the Prosecutor General’s Office.[1]
Police published photos of the seized items from Wisham’s apartment: six
unopened and two empty beer cans, and six pieces of cellophane containing hash
oil.[1]Police refused to state the quantity of alcohol or hash oil found;
alcohol use in the Maldives carries up to three months’ jail and 40 lashes,
while drug abuse carries harsher prison sentences.[1]
People close to Wisham, including a lawyer at the Attorney General’s office who
called him a ‘pro-government, technical lawyer,’ described the arrest as
‘targeted,’ saying there seemed to be no explicit public policy reason for
police to carry out such a raid.[1]
Photos and video
Police handout of the beer cans and cellophane packets of hash oil seized from the apartment, published with the Maldives Independent report of the arrest. Photo: Maldives IndependentPhoto details
The article names no city for the raid; Malé, the capital where the Attorney General’s and Prosecutor General’s offices sit, is used as the location, and precision is recorded as locality.
The arrest is dated 'Monday night' in a piece published 29 September 2015; 28 September 2015 is used as the incident date.
No weight or value for the hash oil or the alcohol was published; police refused to comment on the quantities found.
No court outcome for Wisham or Waheed was reported; the case is at the house-arrest stage.
Only one accessible account of the event was found; no independent second source could be opened.
The page’s only photograph is the newspaper’s own 'wisham-drugs' handout with no credit or photographer, and its caption only repeats the headline.
Customs found 3,345 grams of cannabis in the luggage of two Indian nationals arriving at Gan International Airport on 22 September 2026; police then arrested the pair plus a Maldivian recipient in a controlled delivery. Three suspects were held for smuggling more than three kilogrammes of drugs.
Police said 1,141 drug operations between 1 January and 31 July 2026 seized more than 144 kg of drugs and 1,856 bottles of alcohol, and led to 1,875 arrests. They searched 23,249 people and more than 7,300 places, opened 1,533 cases and sent 634 to the Prosecutor General; 116 foreign nationals were handed to Immigration for deportation. The figures covered all drugs and did not separate cannabis.
Maldives authorities arrested 30-year-old Indian national Suraj Karwar after finding two packets that tested positive for THC hidden in tennis shoes in his luggage. The Criminal Court ordered him held for five days to allow him to seek a state defence lawyer.
Maldives police and customs arrested a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man at Velana International Airport with 31 packets of cannabis on 12 January 2019 and a second 21-year-old at a home in Malé with 26 more packets. The Criminal Court remanded both to 15 days in police custody.
