As Rob recently noted, it’s been a while since we’ve written material for the site. While the break has been a good opportunity to catch my breath and get on with some other things, it’s about time I got off my all-too-skinny posterior and back into the swing of all things rehabology.com. And I thought that before I got into some more in-depth stories - or rambling ones depending on your point of view - it would be good to do a little update on a few stories I’ve blogged about in the past.
It’s been quite a few month’s since we encountered the case that was making headlines in India, that of drug charges against Rahul Mahajan, the son of a former top BJP official. You may recall that in August of last year a charge sheet had just been filed against him, this after that fateful early morning in June when he and his father’s ex-aide, Vivek Maitra, were rushed to hospital after apparent overdoses of illegal drugs, with the latter dead on arrival. Well, a trial date has finally been set for the 21st of February, when Mahajan, who has pleaded not guilty, will face charges of illegal possession of drugs, along with abetment and criminal conspiracy. His co-accused, Sahil Zaroo, and Mahajan’s assistant, Harish Sharma, also face various drugs charges; two Nigerians who are said to have supplied the drugs in question also face charges.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Bangladesh, investigations into a large heroin smuggling ring into the United Kingdom has been going nowhere for sometime now, this after a well-known Bangladeshi businessman, Badruddoza Chowdhury Momen, was arrested in June of last year as part of a large drug smuggling ring and subsequently confessed. According to the Daily Star newspaper, the Bangladeshi foreign ministry had written a letter to the British High Commission in the capital Dhaka “requesting it to take steps for the Bangladeshi investigators’ trip to the UK to carry out further investigation into the country’s biggest ever heroin smuggling case.” But so far no response has been received due to “formalities”. It was the UK who had first alerted Bangladesh to heroin smuggling after three unclaimed consignments of products originating in Bangladesh had been found by UK customs officials to contain £10m worth of heroin.
On the subject of smuggling, Giles Carlyle-Clarke, who made headlines mid last year as the skilled sailor of aristocratic background who had been trying to avoid extradition to Alabama in the United States where he was to face charges of smuggling marijuana to the southern state in the 1980s from Jamaica, has been sentenced to three years in federal prison. He pleaded guilty in November to “conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana”. He avoided a ten-year minimum year sentence due to what prosecutors say was his co-operation with investigators.
