The Goa drug divide

Mayank Tewari travels across Goa and finds that while the south is still about beautiful beaches and tourism, the north is where hashish and the hippie make a heady cocktail

Cocaine, LSD and hashish, rave parties, a corrupt police, the Russian mafia and the odd murder or two… tourism in Goa couldn’t have been more exciting. The state’s reputation as a drug destination has long existed, but Scarlett Keeling’s murder has again turned the spotlight away from tourism to the tales its seedy beaches tell.

The junkie’s geography
North Goa is the mecca for a junkie looking for a cheap thrill along the sea with some great food and trance parties thrown in. When the flower power took charge in the mid sixties, Anjuna beach was chosen winter destination after a summer sojourn in the hippie capital of the world, Kathmandu.

Police officers in Goa speak at length about the north-south divide in Goa. “The image is that Goa is all about foreigners and drugs. The reality is that north Goa is all about foreigners and drugs while south Goa is all about tourism,” said a senior police official. The figures make the argument highly plausible. “At least 22 lakh visitors come to Goa annually and out of them only 1.5 lakh visitors are foreigners. Out of these foreigners, the ones who are well off and expect a good relaxing holiday, land up in south Goa. The rest: junkies, hippies and poor backpackers go to north Goa to do drugs and get wasted on the beach,” the officer added. For the local administration, the poor tourists best left on their own. “Anjuna and Arambol do not contribute anything to the tourism business in Goa. The foreigners who stay here are not tourists. A visitor staying on for years cannot be called a tourist,” a senior government official said.

Exotic Anjuna
For decades Anjuna reigned as the place to be and the place to see for hippies and backpackers from all over the world. The beaches of Anjuna were virgin and the drugs came about easily. The place today feeds on the legend. “Gone are the mind-blowing parties and world class DJs. Anjuna is now a relic of its past glory,” said Johann Korda, a German tourist in his fifties.

The drug trail
The drug trail begins north of Panjim towards Anjuna and further down to the current hippie capital of the universe: Arambol. On the way are several known hotspots of the hippie era - Morjim and its silent river beaches, the trance parties in Vagator and the beach parties in Calangute.
 
“A typical itinerary for north Goa will need three months. Start the trip in November and wrap it up at the end of February. Live anywhere in Anjuna, Morjim and Arambol and soak in the sun during the day and party at night,” said Cecilia Campbell, a 34-year-old British woman who has been in Goa for more than a decade. “Don’t look for the drugs. The trip will follow you everywhere,” she added.

The police-mafia nexus
It’s difficult to miss the drug  mob-cop connection in Goa. Senior officials from the Union territory IPS cadre are candid in their admission of guilt. “The lower level staff is into the trade big time. There’s a lot of money in it for looking the other way,” said one such senior IPS officer.

The Goa police have a very keen grip on the hashish supply in the city. It’s the most expensive drug after cocaine for a tourist because of the popular appeal and a slowly rising social acceptance of an occasional spliff or a snort. It’s also the most profitable to trade in. Hashish is usually sold in denominations of 10 grams, called a tola in the traditional Indian metric system. “The pushers in Goa do not have more than 20 tolas at any given time. If a pusher suddenly picks up a lot of hashish, the police get a whiff of the deal and they hound the dealer all season long,” said a source well versed with the drug trade in Goa.

The mafia in Goa in has very close links with the Kullu valley that supplies hashish not only to Goa but the entire Indian sub-continent and Thailand besides the famous cannabis parlours of Amsterdam where hashish from Kullu valley is sold at a premium. 

The man who allegedly killed Scarlette Keeling was one such drug pusher with inroads in the Goa police. The investigating officer in the case, who has since been suspended, had initially botched up the case saying Scarlette had drowned and there was no question of a sexual assault. “The police official is under suspension and his links with the drug mafia are being investigated,” Kishen Kumar, IG, Goa said.

Bennett case unsolved
Generous favours to the drug mafia are common in Goa. Two years ago, in December 2006, Stephen Bennett, a British tourist in Goa, was found hanging from a mango tree. The police, first claimed that Bennet had committed suicide but retracted their statement under pressure from his mother. They then claimed Bennet died after a fight with a group of drug peddlers. The case is still under investigation.

The substances
Visitors to Goa hanging out at any of the numerous bars in Anjuna are bound to find locals whispering promises of a good stuff and a great trip in their ears: “Want some good stuff?”

In Goa every substance goes by two inter changeable street names: Trip and stuff. Some trips are party accessories; there are trips to relax, trips to get you on the dance floor and stuff that make you lie down on the fields like piece of pumpkin. The most common trips doing the rounds in Goa are hashish, LSD, ecstasy, ketamine and other synthetic drugs.

Narcotics Control Bureau  (NCB) sleuths point out a disturbing trend emerging in the last few years: the manufacture of chemical drugs in Goa. The mafia in Goa has mastered the local industrial production of a party pill called CK1. Known by its street names Blizzard and Calvin Klein, it is easily available in the north Goa beach belt.
The substances are smuggled into the country through a well-oiled courier system that is increasingly hiring minor travellers to ferry their drugs to Goa from international and domestic locations. Once the drugs reach the shores of
Goa, the mafia takes over.

One such drug pusher agreed to speak to DNA on condition of anonymity. “The mafia controls the drug price in such a way that the most popular substances are the most expensive and perpetually in short supply,” he said and took out a lump of a black coloured substance from the pocket of his shorts. “This is hash, charas. The stuff most foreigners look for in Goa,” he added. He said his supplier charges nearly Rs 1000 for 10 gm. “I can sell it between Rs 1500 to 3000.”

Dangerous imports
While most of the hashish sold in Goa is produced locally in India, cocaine and the chemical drugs are flown into India. “We do not know which airports are preferred by drug pushers but we know that they avoid entering Delhi, Mumbai or Goa from European countries with a consignment of drugs in their luggage,” said a senior NCB official in Delhi. Chemcials like LSD and ecstasy is the real challenge for the law enforcers. “LSD is carried by pushers in little eardrop bottles. Many drug couriers simply walk through the airport security,” the officer added.

The Indian drug dream
“We’ve come all the way to Anjuna to try out some ecstasy. Are there any side effects?” asked a young couple from Jaipur. Having heard stories of full moon raves from their friends, the couple decided it was time they had a psychedelic experience to call their own. Tourists who end up paying the highest prices for stuff in Goa are Indians, like the couple from Jaipur, who could shell out 10 times the price of the drug if only they knew where to buy it.

In the bars of Chopora in north Goa it is common to spot Indian boys and girls hanging out in the middle of the night looking for a drug pusher.

The Russian connection
Drugs in Goa have a definite Russian connection according to the Indian intelligence community. However, clinching evidence that nails a suspected mafia operator in court eludes them.

In December 2006, the intelligence community began to make the first noises about the Russian mafia. The National Security Council (NSC) told the government that the Russian mafia is making huge real estate investments in Goa, as the sector comes under automatic approval. Sources  told DNA that the mafia has made investments in the tourism sector that gives them a cover for activities like drug peddling.

t_mayank@dnaindia.net