Drugs rife in India's Goa despite crackdown

(AFP PHOTO/Indranil MUKHERJEE)

Two foreign tourists walk down to the shore at Anjuna Beach in the Indian resort state of Goa. In tow is a local man, persistently offering them a menu of illegal drugs.

"You want hash?" he asks in a whisper, glancing to left and right, as the couple smile politely and decline. "Coke? I can get you coke. Or pills. It's no problem."

Aggressive drug pushing is commonplace at Anjuna Beach, a popular resort in the north of the former Portuguese colony, which has been a haven for foreign visitors since the days of the hippie trail in the 1960s and 1970s.

Local police launched a crackdown on dealers and users after the death of British teenager Scarlett Keeling in February 2008 and a state government warning that Anjuna and other places like it were "hotbeds for drugs".

North Goa police superintendent Bosco George told AFP in February that the raids had been largely successful.

But one of his senior colleagues in the area disagrees.

"The situation is the same. No amount of raids can control the problem," he said last week on condition of anonymity.

Witness statements supporting the charges against two local men awaiting trial in connection with Keeling's death lay bare the extent of the drugs culture.

The 15-year-old was found to have taken a cocktail of drink and drugs before she died.

In his statement to federal investigators, obtained by the media last week, Murli Saga Bolluju said all types of drugs - from hashish, cocaine and ecstasy to ketamine and LSD - were readily available in Anjuna Beach.

"In most shacks (beachside bars), the foreigners and Indians (use) hash joints," added Bolluju, who said he had been at the Lui Cafe, one of the places where Keeling was seen before she died.

"No shack owner will stop a hash joint user. Sometimes he will also join the foreigners and have a puff."

Lui Cafe waiter Chandru Chauhan also accused the bar's owners of procuring drugs.

Placido Carvalho, one of the accused and a former employee of the Lui Cafe, brought in cocaine and kept "it below the plastic cloth on the table meant for chopping vegetables", Chauhan added in his witness statement.

A conviction for possession of illegal narcotics carries a maximum seven-year jail term in India.

One former convict, who spent seven years in prison for drug offences, said local youths were lured into the trade because of high drop-out rates at school and the prospect of earning quick, easy cash.

"First it's the temptation to own a stylish motorbike and later to make huge money that attracts them towards this," he said, on condition of anonymity.

"The drug lords always have their faithfuls here in the state who recruit these people to scout for foreigners to sell the contraband to.

"Parking lots in front of nightclubs, beach shacks and taxi drivers are the reference points for the availability of the drugs."

According to the former prisoner, the drugs trade in north Goa is handled by "two big lobbies" - Russians and Britons, the two national groups who make up the majority of the 400,000 foreign visitors who come to the state each year.

"The state police are very well informed about these lobbies, which again came to light during the investigation of the Scarlett Keeling case," he added.

Police dismissed the witness claims in the federal charge sheet as "nothing new", as they had been made during the local police investigation.

Scarlett's mother, Fiona MacKeown, has accused police of protecting local drug gangs by not initially opening a murder inquiry and dismissing her daughter's death as accidental drowning.