For foreign drug dealers, Bengaluru is a safe haven

Potholes aren’t the only thing making Bengaluru infamous. The city is also topping national charts in drug dealing by foreigners, police say.

Sample this. At 147, Karnataka reported the most cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in 2021.

Bengaluru alone saw 141 of them, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Delhi reported 34 cases and Maharashtra 32 in the same period.

And the ringleaders of this menace are foreigners, Africans to be precise, according to the city police.

Despite tall claims, the government has done little to crack down on foreigners engaged in drug dealing, prostitution and other crimes.

When G Parameshwara was the home minister, he singled out Africans for the “rampant” drug menace in Karnataka. His statement generated controversy, but NCRB data shows he wasn’t wrong.

Data from the City Crime Records Bureau (CCRB) shows that 141 cases were registered against foreigners under the NDPS Act in 2021, 66 cases in 2020 and 33 cases in 2019. The figure for 2022, till September, was 69.

This apart, police registered 26 cases against overstaying foreigners till September this year. This figure was 20 last year, 72 in 2020 and 61 in 2019.

According to the police, most of the foreigners arrested for drug dealing had overstayed their visas. “The actual number of overstayers is far higher. But we could only find these many,” a senior police officer said.

Bengaluru police recently petitioned the principal sessions judge for a fast-track court to deal with the cases of foreigners. The judiciary has agreed to expedite the trials and transfer the cases to courts that have fewer cases. It would be similar to a fast-track court.

Raman Gupta, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), said: “If the accused are convicted fast, we can deport them early.”

Another senior police officer said many overstaying foreigners took advantage of pending court trials.

“Sometimes, courts deliver judgments three to five years after the charge sheet is filed. Meanwhile, the foreigners stay on and commit even more crimes. We need them to be punished quickly and once the punishment is over, we want to deport them,” the officer said.

Another problem in dealing with foreigners involved in crimes is the lack of exclusive funds for deportation, which slows the process, said officials in the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and the police.

Police must spend available funds and bill the government later.

On average, the government has to spend Rs 3,000 per foreigner, providing them with food three times a day. The expenditure is audited by the state government and sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs for reimbursement.

A source said: “The state or central government should create a corpus that the police can spend on deportation. How else will the police get funds?”

Dealing with foreigners warrants diplomacy. Police need to consider India’s relations with the country of the suspect.

“We cannot throw out someone just like that. If the suspect does not have any identification documents such as a passport and visa, we need to contact the appropriate embassy. It verifies whether the person is a citizen or not. Then it issues a travel certificate. Only then can a person be deported,” the source explained.

Besides hiding their identification documents, foreigners, especially Africans, also mis-state their country of origin. For example, if someone is from Ghana, they claim to be from Nigeria. The embassy takes time to verify such cases, the source added.

The Bengaluru police have deported 250 overstaying foreigners in the last two years, including 159 this year until August. Most are from Africa and Bangladesh. Where to keep the foreigners is another problem. Bengaluru has a detention centre for male foreigners at Sondekoppa near Nelamangala. It can accommodate 40 people, but most of the time, up to 50 foreigners are present there. The city needs a much larger deportation centre for male foreigners and a separate one for women.

As of September, Bengaluru had 5,936 foreigners, including 3,517 students. As many as 570 people were overstaying in Bengaluru and 51 elsewhere in Karnataka.