JOHOR BARU: A married couple was among seven arrested in three separate raids, as Johor police continue the hunt for a local mastermind believed to still be in Malaysia.
Police nabbed the seven suspects of a drug trafficking syndicate, five local males and two foreign females aged between 22 and 33 years, in raids in Seri Alam and Johor Baru which yielded over RM10mil in seized drugs.
“Police launched a special operation last Monday (Aug 12) between 12.30pm and 2pm where the first raid took place at an apartment, which led to the arrest of four male suspects,” Johor police chief Comm M. Kumar told a press conference at the state police headquarters here on Monday (Aug 19).
“Checks found that the syndicate had been using the homestay apartment for about a month to process and repackage the drugs.
“The group paid about RM6,000 to rent the apartment for a month to carry out their illegal activities,” he said.
Comm Kumar said in the two other raids, police raided a double-storey terrace house, which led to the arrest of the married couple and another apartment unit here where the seventh suspect was also detained.
He also said that checks on the suspects found three of them have previous records while six of them also tested positive for various drugs
Comm Kumar added that besides the arrests, police seized 59.6kg of ecstasy powder worth RM9.9mil, 93.3grams of ketamine worth RM18,680, 263 pills of ecstasy worth RM13,193, 380 pills of Eramine 5 worth RM10,310 and 41grams of ganja worth RM1,230.
“The total value of the seized drugs, which can feed about 199,644 drug addicts, is more than RM10mil,” he said adding that the seizure value was among the highest recorded by Johor police this year.
He also said that checks on the suspects found three of them had previous records while six of them also tested positive for various drugs.
“Police also seized 500ml of liquid vape, 10 units of electronic cigarettes, tools to process the drugs, four cars, one motorcycle, jewelry worth more than RM10,000 and cash including foreign currencies amounting to RM43,000,” he added.
Comm Kumar said that the syndicate has been active for about a month where they would process the drugs by using gated and guarded residential areas before selling it to the local market.
He added that police was searching for the group’s mastermind who is a 36-year-old local male and is still believed to be in this country.
Comm Kumar said all seven suspects were currently under remand until this Thursday (Aug 22) to assist with the investigation under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drug Act 1952.
