Police officers in Mariakani have seized 5,231 rolls of bhang and 12 sachets of cocaine in two locations within the town.
Subcounty police boss Ezekiel Chepkwony on Monday said the haul of bhang has a street value of Sh1.03 million while the heroine is valued at Sh3,600.
“We received a tip-off from a member of the public that there was someone selling bhang in Misufini area of Mariakani town. Our officers swung into action. We managed to arrest one suspect in whose house the bhang was stashed. We also recovered a machine used to mill the drug to soft pieces before it’s rolled,” Chepkwony said.
The cocaine was nabbed in a club within the town.
Chepkwony said the bhang had most likely been brought from another region raising questions on the efficiency of roadblocks.
“These drugs are normally ferried in trailers and even petroleum trucks. They normally conceal them in such a way that it is hard to suspect anything. Before they reach the Mariakani weighbridge they transfer them to smaller vehicles which use different routes to evade roadblocks,” the police boss said.
He said they then use motorbikes to transport the drugs to various destinations
Kaloleni MP Paul Katana expressed fears that youths in the constituency could soon lose their focus for abusing drugs.
“Mariakani has always been a transit area for the drugs but now that such a huge haul has been nabbed, this means the drugs are being consumed here. This is worrying especially during this coronavirus pandemic period. The police should tighten the noose on drug peddlers to make sure we wipe out hard drugs in our midst,” he said
The person arrested is a criminology student in one of the Kenyan universities.
“This is very sad. This is a youth with a promising future but he has decided to waste his future by peddling drugs,” Katana said.
He expressed fears that a larger amount of the drugs could have already been sold to residents.
Police will heighten surveillance in all roadblocks to cut the supply of hard drugs in the subcounty, Chepkwony said.
Edited by R.Wamochie
