Saturday September 19, 2009
Pos, spice and the ganja trade
By MUGUNTAN VANAR
KOTA KINABALU: A bid to smuggle in “spiced ganja” through Pos Laju was foiled by Customs personnel here.
Sabah Customs director Datuk Md Yusup Mansor said they recovered about 1kg of ganja leaves in a box that contained a variety of spices. The illegal substance was detected by a scanner at a post office here.
Illegal cargo: Yusop taking a closer look at the seized drugs yesterday. “We believe the person who was supposed to collect the box did not turn up as he might have suspected that we were monitoring the parcel,” he said yesterday.
Yusop said that the parcel was detected at about 10am on Thursday and a team of Customs officers waited for the person to claim the parcel but by 5pm no one turned up. They subsequently seized the parcel.
This is the second case of drug-smuggling in the state in one week. A total of 300gm of ketamine powder using a similar modus operandi was seized earlier.
Yusop said Customs suspect a syndicate might be behind the smuggling though investigations are still ongoing.
“We are trying to identify the owner of the parcel but the name and address of the person who sent it was found to be fictitious.”
He said Customs intelligence believe that the drugs were owned by a person living here who had bought it from suppliers in peninsular Malaysia.”
“We are searching for the mastermind,” he said, adding that investigations were being carried out under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 which carries the death sentence.
He said that Customs operations would continue throughout the Hari Raya period and urged anyone with information to inform the department.
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