20 arrested in drug network bust

The police drug enforcement department on Saturday raided a house in Malé and arrested 20 suspects from an alleged drug trafficking network.

The house in Maafannu district was searched with a court warrant based on intelligence information of drug peddling.

Some 38 rubber packets with illicit narcotics were seized from the house. The 20 suspects include a minor and a foreign national, police said.

A group of locals selling drugs in Malé were also arrested in an operation last week. The 11 suspects included nine men, one woman and a minor.

On Friday, five suspects were arrested with 21 bottles of alcohol. A sixth suspect escaped when the suspects were stopped on the Ameer Ahmed road in the capital.

The six men on motorbikes were stopped based on information that they were smuggling alcohol bottles into Malé, police said.