Drug trafficking: Saudi to behead two Keralites

RAJEEV PIPosted online:
Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 0000 hrs

KOCHI, May 10 :Less than a fortnight after Chief Minister Oommen Chandy himself turned up at the airport to receive Naushad, the Malayali immigrant worker who was spared after a court in Saudi Arabia ordered to have his eye gouged out, two Keralites have now been sentenced to be beheaded in the desert kingdom.

A Shariah court in Damam has ordered the duo, 48-year-old Hamsa Abubacker of Malappuram and 42-year-old Shiekh Mastan of Kozhikode, to be beheaded for drug trafficking. The Saudi police had allegedly caught Hamsa with some heroin as he got off from an Indian Airlines flight from Mumbai three years ago. Reports say the local cops caught Sheikh Mastan, who was already in the Saudi capital Riyadh, after Hamsa confessed that a man in Malappuram had asked him to deliver the package to Mastan.

Hamsa, originally belonging to Chavakkad in Thrissur, has been staying in Malappuram for the past few years. He has a wife, two daughters and a son. Hamsa had been doing odd manual jobs back home before going to Saudi Arabia. Strangely, his wife, 41-year-old Rukhiya, had received a draft for Rs 5,000 sent in Hamsa’s name three months ago, though Hamsa has been in jail for the last three years.

There are also apprehensions that Mastan may actually be someone else using a passport that he had procured using a false name and address, since his home cannot be located at the Kozhikode address in his passport. The Regional Passport Officer at Kozhikode told The Indian Express that his office has yet to get a communication from MEA to check up on the passport details of the two men.

The Dubai-based Radio Asia has reported today that 32 men from Kerala were executed in Saudi Arabia during the last 10 years for drug-related offences.

rajeev.pi@expressindia.com

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