An African footballer is among four suspected drug peddlers arrested by JP Nagar police with 14.84 grams of cocaine and 15 grams of Ecstacy tablets worth Rs 2.4 lakh.
Dosso Khalifa, 27, who played football in Ivory Coast for a local team, had arrived in India in 2015 on a sports visa and stayed in Delhi and Kolkata. He came to Bengaluru three years later and allegedly started peddling drugs.
His visa expired but he stayed on. He was arrested by Bagalagunte and Konanakunte police for drug-peddling but the court released him on bail.
Police said that Khalifa had developed a friendship with a JP Nagar resident named Ravi Kumar alias BDA Ravi, 46, and Syed Sohaibuddin, 27, from Mysuru. The fourth member of the gang was a party organiser named Mohammed Muzammil, 27, a resident of Fraser Town.
The party organiser
Muzammil worked as a marketing executive at a tourist agency in Sri Lanka. His job was to attract crowds to casinos. But the pandemic forced him to return to Bengaluru. Back home, he took to drug-peddling to make a living, according to police.
Sohaibuddin had been in touch with foreigners involved in drug-peddling for the past eight months, police said. He became friends with Muzammil, and through him, befriended Kumar.
Kumar worked as an agent in the BDA. He counted many rich people among his friends. He had visited Sri Lanka with the help of Muzammil and indulged in gambling there.
He later started peddling drugs with help from foreign nationals in the city, police said.
Apart from the drugs, police said they had also seized a BMW car, a two-wheeler and six mobile phones from the gang.
Deccan Herald is on WhatsApp Channels| Join now for Breaking News & Editor's Picks