Drug trafficking: police retrieve contact lists of prime suspects

The Kozhikode City police have retrieved the contact lists of a few major alleged synthetic drug pushers who were recently arrested by the District-Level Anti-Narcotics Special Action Force (DANSAF) during flash inspections.

Police sources said the recovered phone data would help identify more suspected traffickers and aid investigations into some previously registered drug cases. The State-level Hi-Tech Crime Inquiry Cell and the Cyber Police are also working to recover deleted social media communications of the arrested suspects from across Kerala, they added.

A senior officer with the Anti-Narcotics Squad in Kozhikode district said over 1,500 drug trafficking cases were registered in the city in the past seven months. Of these, over 30 cases involved the seizure of commercial quantities of drugs, which were investigated in detail using call detail records (CDR) accessed with the technical support of the Cyber Cell officers.

Apart from tracking CDRs and social media activity, the police also examined the bank account details of several arrested ‘drug traffickers’ to trace their financial sources and identify persons linked to suspicious transactions. Officers said that several accounts—some operated from abroad—had already been frozen as part of the intensified crackdown.

Within the past seven months alone, the bank accounts of 10 arrested suspected drug pushers were frozen in Kozhikode city limits, according to the latest data available with the District Crime Records Bureau. This was in addition to the confiscation of illegally acquired assets, including vehicles and other immovable properties, of arrested ‘drug pushers’.

Police sources said forfeiture proceedings under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act, 1976, would soon be initiated against more persons who were recently caught with commercial quantities of synthetic drugs. They added that police stations in the city limits now have well-trained special squads dedicated to handling trafficking cases and ensuring proper follow-up action.