Panaji, March 10 (IANS) The central government Thursday told the Bombay High Court that it needed more time to study Goa's police-politician-drug mafia nexus, before it could consider handing over the high-profile case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Mahesh Amonkar, who represented the central government's department of personnel at the hearing before the high court's Panaji bench, said he would respond within a week to the petition by the Congress' students wing, National Students Union of India (NSUI), seeking a CBI probe in the drug nexus probe.

Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and F.M. Reis have scheduled the next hearing for March 17.

NSUI had petitioned the high court seeking a probe by the CBI in the drug nexus case, in which state Home Minister Ravi Naik's son has been linked.

NSUI president Sunil Kavthankar had also been brutally assaulted by unknown assailants, days after he had started a signature campaign in the student community, seeking a central probe in the drug nexus probe.

Several policemen as well as two Israeli drug dealers were arrested and subsequently released on bail after a Swedish model and a former girlfriend of a drug dealer had uploaded incriminating videos in which the drug dealer was seen speaking on popular video upload site Youtube about how police sell drugs to them.

The model, Lucky Farmhouse, had also said in an interview to an Israeli newspaper that Naik's son Roy had links with Yaniv Benaim alias Atala.