Certain revisions to Police procedure and operations have directly contributed to the increase in criminal convictions in drug related cases, Maldives Police Service (MPS) has said.
MPS led by its Drug Enforcement Department has intensified efforts to tackle drug related offences in the Maldives, arguably the biggest social issue plaguing the island nation.
Chief Inspector of Police Ahmed Naif told PSM News that the drug enforcement department has made major strides towards tackling drug offences in the last two years or so. He pointed out that the number of drug raids had increased to 12,000 last year compared to the 9,300 in 2023.
The number of drugs seized last year had also increased, according to Naif. In 2023, 123kg of drugs were seized by MPS compared to the staggering 654kg last year, he said.
Noting that the success of such anti- drug related efforts depend on the outcome of the cases in the court of law, Naif said MPS had recorded a 95 percent successful convictions of the drug cases last year.
This, according to Naif, is a 20 percent increase compared to 2023, where he attributed the improved success on certain revisions to police procedure in the recent past.
"We have gone from 75 percent to reach 95 percent. We are also doing a lot of work internally to improve our procedures. For example, when a court rules on a case, we study the case and see whether we had made any mistakes operationally, or during the investigation stage. So we are adjusting our procedures and operations based on the findings,” the Chief Inspector of Police revealed.
According to Criminal Court statistics, in 2024, the court had ruled on 137 drug related cases, out of which over more than 95 percent were convictions. Twenty of the convicts were sentenced to life imprisonment and fined USD661,478.