Notorious drug supplier from Goa arrested by Hyderabad cops, J-NEW sleuths

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad’s Narcotic Enforcement Wing (H-NEW) and Ramgopalpet police arrested a drug dealer, Edwin Nunes, 45, from Goa late Friday night. The Goa police had arrested Nunes in August in connection with the death of BJP leader Sonali Phogat, a social media influencer, who was alleged to have been drugged in his restaurant, Curlies Shack.

Hyderabad police commissioner C.V. Anand said that the police caught Nunes after a two-month operation. “Nunes is an influential drug dealer who has been applying for anticipatory bail in the sessions court and High Court but opposed it. He has also submitted an anticipatory bail application in the Supreme Court, which also we have opposed. We nabbed him before the hearing,” Anand said.

He said that Nunes, along with drug dealer Priteesh Narayan Borkar, whom the police had arrested earlier, had around 1,200 customers in the two Telugu states.

“Nunes, who has about 100 men working for him, conducts rave parties and music festivals during the weekend and supplies different types of drugs to the customers,” Anand said.

“The place is widely known for its narcotics trade, so much so that the local police thanked us. He had gone underground after his last bail and showed a fake Covid-19 positive certificate to Anjuna police to evade investigation. The police found it to be forged,” Anand said, adding that another shack, which was illegally being constructed by Nunes, was demolished by the local authorities with the intervention of Hyderabad police.

“We are now focused on nabbing Sanjay Gowekar, another drug supplier who is absconding. We are also trying to establish the links through which drugs are being transported to hubs like Goa. We are in discussions with the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and others to tackle the issue,” the commissioner said.