By Desire Emmanuel
Six months after their arrest by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for shipping 31.5 kilogrammes of cocaine from Marshall Islands into Nigeria through the Apapa seaport in Lagos, 11 Indian sailors and their merchant vessel marked MV Aruna Hulya were on Thursday, June 11, convicted and fined a total of $6 million by a Federal High Court in Lagos.
The agency took into custody the Indian crew members and their ship following the discovery of the hard drug in hatch 3 of the ship by its operatives at the GDNL terminal, Apapa port, on Friday, January 2 this year.
Captain of the ship, Sharma Shashi Bhushan and 10 other crew members, namely: Bharati Manoj Kumar; Nevage Sandesh Suresh; Pandey Prashant; Nuttu Anand; Akash Babu; Nilesh Mukuno Bhalerad; Melethil Insaf Rahman; Barla Chantanya Krishna; Prabhasukhan Singu; and Jai Parkash, were eventually arraigned on two counts charge before Joseph Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court, Lagos.
After months before the court, the judge on Thursday delivered his ruling on plea bargain terms filed by the prosecution and defence in the case.
As a result, all the Indians were convicted under Section 25 of the NDLEA Act and sentenced to pay the sum of N100,000 each which is the penalty for the offence under the Act.
In addition, the first defendant, which is the ship, is to pay restitution to the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the sum of $5.3 million or its equivalent in naira.
The three principal officers of the vessel who are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th defendants, namely: Sharma Shashi Bhushan; Nilesh Mukuno Bhalerad; and Melethil Insaf Rahman, are also to pay restitution to the Federal Government in the sum of $100,000 each, while other crew members are to pay their restitution in the sum of $50,000 each.
Reacting to the judgment, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, Mohamed Buba Marwa, noted that the conviction of the vessel and its crew members sends a message to every drug trafficking network in the world that Nigeria is no longer a safe corridor for cocaine or any other illicit substance.
The agency, in a statement on the conviction, qouted Marwa as saying “the NDLEA will not relent. Whether you come by air, land, or sea; whether you are a Nigerian or a foreign national, if you attempt to use our waters as a narcotics highway, you will face the full weight of Nigerian law.”
