Hyderabad: Language barrier helps international drug peddlers go scotfree

Hyderabad: Though the city police have pulled out all the stops to nab drug peddlers involved in major cases, the main challenge faced by them is language barrier as most of the drug peddlers are from foreign countries like Nigeria, Somalia, Malawi, Sudan. The major challenge faced by city police is to get the conviction for these peddlers.

An officer on condition of anonymity said, "We arrest the culprits after a lot of hard work and efforts and these drug peddlers from foreign countries get acquitted very easily within few days because whenever they are questioned by the translators they keep quite and deny any kind of involvement in drugs cases. Most of them keep repeating only one sentence that is 'they have no idea'. The main reason why the police department take help of translators in these drugs cases is because the culprits do not respond to the questioning properly."

"Now, these drug peddlers have adopted a new modus operandi of not even revealing anything to the translator. Earlier when we started using the services of the translators, the translators were successful in extracting information from these culprits. But now even the translators are unable to get more details because the drug peddlers are keeping silent during questioning without revealing any details and their advocates are getting them bail by citing lack of evidence," the officer added.

Recently a Nigerian was arrested by the police for selling drugs. Though we brought in a translator who knew Nigerian language, the culprit said that he does not know that language as he is from Ethiopia. But his passport was of Nigeria and when the culprit was questioned about it he denied knowing anything about the passport and just said that he got the passport from an agent in his country. In such a way, the culprits are confusing the investigators and after getting bail and are continuing their drug business until their Visa gets expired, said an officer.