An Excise squad on Wednesday night arrested five youths with 616 grams of MDMA during a surprise inspection at Manassery near Kunnamangalam. The suspects — Mubasheer Ali, 24, Ashiq Azeez, 34, Habeeb Rahman, 23, Fayiz Mohammed, 27, and Jaffer Sadiq, 28 — were nabbed during a flash vehicle checking and a subsequent raid at a rented house at Manassery.
Excise officials said it was Ali and Azeez who were detained first with their motorcycle during the vehicle checking at Manassery. Liquid cash worth ₹72,500 and a mobile phone were recovered from the two.
Sources in the department said the three other youths who were suspected of assisting the two arrested were nabbed from their rented house at Manassery. All of them are natives of Thamarassery and Puthuppadi villages in Kozhikode district. The squad members said the arrested were part of an established network of synthetic drug peddlers in Kozhikode.
