Seven busted for 350kg of dagga worth P1.8m
Pini Bothoko | Tuesday October 17, 2017 13:01
In an interview with Mmegi the Botswana Police Service (BPS)’s director of crime intelligence, Nunu Lesetedi said the seven men were arrested when they were still busy offloading the bags from a horse and trailer that was transporting goods from South Africa.
“The police caught the suspects whilst still in the action of offloading the 25kg bags full of dagga from the truck. Police confiscated 18 bags of dagga and all of the seven men are currently in custody helping the police with investigations,” Lesetedi said.
He said the truck from Swaziland was the one transporting dagga to trade it in Botswana. He said the truck driver managed to cross the border with the bags unnoticed but luckily later on the security agents managed to arrest them while offloading the drugs.
Lesetedi said that the 18 bags of dagga are alleged to worth P1.8 million in the street value. He said that the seven men have been charged with an offense of unlawful possession of dagga and will soon appear before court.
He went on to disclose that recently the police also confiscated dagga valued at P19,000 and weeks back they also seized dagga valued at P5,700.
“Since our recent raids we managed to arrest a lot of people and confiscated large quantity of drugs amounting to a large sum of money even though I do not have the exact amount at this time,” Lesetedi said.
Lesetedi raised a concern of the country being targeted by international drug barons especially from southern Africa and Mozambique.
It has since been established that the demand for drugs in Botswana is currently very high looking at their frequent distribution into the country.
Lesetedi said South African countries drug barons are currently controlling the country’s drug market because they have established that they are the ones who illegally cross the border into the country with the drugs.
He cautioned Batswana over the high use of drugs, which he pointed to be currently spiraling out of control.
He said some Batswana have found business in selling drugs because they have been arresting them in high numbers ever since they started their raids.
He said the most common drugs smuggled into the country are marijuana, crack, methcathinone popularly known as cat, madaena, and cocaine to mention but a few.