A special narcotics court on Monday sentenced a 29-year-old hotel management graduate to 10 years in jail for smuggling heroin into Mumbai in 2005.
Albert Challappa, the accused, after finishing his hotel management course from an institute in Chennai, started to work as a captain waiter in one of the outlets of a caf頣alled Sweet Chariot. However, since he wanted to start his own restaurant, Challappa quit his job in 2005.
After being out of work for a long time, Challapa started to seek for a good job in the Middle East. However, on failing to gather enough money, he approached the kingpin of the smuggling ring Adam Bam, who used to be one of his customers.
As per Bams instructions, in July 2005,Challapa collaborated with three other accused - Thana Nayagam Vikramasinghe, a Sri Lankan refugee, Ramaswamy Kannan and Vijay Shankar - and left for a distant village in Rajasthan called Baswad. There they met one Kamal Singh and paid him Rs4 lakh to deliver the contraband to them in Ahmedabad.
After supplying them with three kilos of heroin, Singh travelled with the other accused to Mumbai on July 22,2005.
The accused were staying at hotel Captain Cook in Mumbai Central when they were nabbed by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officials.
Special public prosecutor Francis Saldanha examined over 10 witnesses in the case.
Taking into consideration that the contraband was found on Challappa, special NDPS Judge A Dhawale convicted him and sentenced him to 10 years in jail and also fined him Rs1 lakh, in default of which he will have to spend two more years in jail.
However, the three other accused, Vikramasinghe, Kannan, Shankar and Singh were acquitted.
