IANS

Panaji, Mar 27: Russia has sought a review of two narcotics cases involving Russians in Goa in which a police officer booked for having links with the narcotics mafia was an investigating officer.

Russian consul general Alexander V. Mantytsky, in a letter to Inspector General of Police Sundari Nanda, sought re-investigation in cases booked under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act against Victor Koplenko and V. Korovael in 2009.

Mantytsky said the cases were booked by police inspector Ashish Shirodkar, a former in-charge of the anti narcotics cell (ANC), arrested for his links to the drug mafia in Goa.

"There are two different offences filed against the accused Russians. Charges have not yet been framed against them," he said in the letter sent March 22, to which IANS has access.

Shirodkar, along with five other police officials, was arrested for suspected links to Israeli drug dealer Yaniv Benaim alias Atala, who is in jail too.

Atala told the police that Shirodkar stole drugs from a police warehouse and sold them to him.

Earlier, in a letter to the Russian consulate last year, one of the accused, Kopelenko, said that Shirodkar had planted drugs on him during a raid at the guest house he was vacationing in.