CID investigates STF

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has launched a special investigation into allegations that several Special Task Force (STF) officers were closely associating with narcotics officers arrested in connection with the sale of heroin to drug traffickers, informed sources said.

It is also learnt that these STF officers were involved in frequent raids along with the suspects in the Narcotics Bureau without the approval of their respective senior officers although they had been deployed in various parts of the country.

This was revealed after the interrogation of a boat’s skipper, who was arrested for allegedly bringing some 243 kilogrammes of heroin from the high seas in his fishing trawler. The suspected narcotic officers had brought this 243 kilogrammes of heroin to the shore in Balapitiya with the help from this boat’s captain.

The boat’s skipper is currently being held by the CID on a detention order and is being questioned. It is said that the narcotics officers have paid him Rs. 10 million for transporting the contraband.

In another revelation, the boat’s skipper had told the CID that the recovery of 294 kilogrammes of heroin at a car park of a supermarket in Kollupitiya in February, 2019 was also a planned raid carried out by the Police Narcotic Bureau officers.

In that incident too, the stock of heroin had been brought to Balapitiya by trawlers by the same skipper and later this stock was transported to a tourist hotel in the Balapitiya area.

A few days later, the heroin stock was brought to Colombo by the suspect narcotics officers and the STF. Later, the heroin stock had reportedly been handed over by the narcotic officers to underworld figures and they themselves arrested those identical persons with the same heroin stock.

Accordingly, the then President Maithripala Sirisena, had gone to the Narcotics Bureau to check the stock of heroin so detected.

According to police sources, it has been revealed that the suspects, including narcotics officers, had given tens of millions of rupees to informants, boat owners and boatmen.

(Source: Daily Mirror – By Sunil Jayasiri)