Goa police blame Swedish witness for drug dealer’s bail

PANAJI - Accused of sabotaging the high-profile probe into the police-politician-drug mafia nexus in Goa, police appear to have made key witness, Swedish model Lucky Farmhouse, the proverbial scapegoat by accusing her of not deposing before them.

“The police attempted to contact her. Efforts were made to trace her. Maybe, she did not have enough time. Maybe, she was involved in such an important activity that she was not able to come,” Superintendent of Police Atmaram Deshpande told IANS.

Deshpande’s remarks came after a local narcotics drugs and psychotropic substance (NDPS) court granted conditional bail to dreaded Israeli drug dealer Yaniv Benaim alias Atala Tuesday evening.

A former girlfriend of Atala, Lucky’s secretly shot spy cam videos of the drug dealer boasting of his links with the police and politicians had resulted in the arrest of seven policemen linked to the drug mafia in the state.

Lucky, who posted several of Atala’s videos Youtube, had also alleged that she had evidence to show that a politician’s son was linked to the drug mafia in Goa.

Lucky, who was in Mumbai for a commercial shoot last month, had recently posted on her blog that the police were not trying to make any efforts to contact her because they did not want the minister’s son to be caught.

Refusing to call the conditional release of Atala a setback to the investigation, Deshpande said investigations into the nexus was still on.

The opposition and the local media, reporting the shoddy probe into the police-politician-drug mafia nexus, have accused crime branch officials of sabotaging the probe at the behest of the senior minister, whose son has been accused by Lucky of having links to the drug mafia.

(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan@gmail.com)

–Indo Asian News Service