In an industrial area in the UAE, two men started a row that immediately led to a fist fight. The fight was nasty enough for onlookers to ring the police; a patrol was called to come and restore order. The team came and pulled apart the two men, 34-year-old Rigor and 32-year-old Dawood. However, both men, instead of ending it there, wanted to take each other to court, each being fully aware of his right to file a complaint against the other.
The patrol team, therefore, went through the regular procedures and transferred the men to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) at one of the nearby police stations for further legal action.
On the face of it, this was just an ordinary case. But the experience of the CID officer at that police station made him suspect that there was more to it.
As soon as he saw the two men, the officer knew their street background because of the way they kept quarrelling with profanities. Also, the officer guessed that this was a staged fight – the two men had started it on purpose so that they both could be charged and be sent to prison.
What made the officer absolutely certain of this fact was that Rigor and Dawood just wouldn’t calm down. Each insisted on sending the other to prison, any prison. The officer, with his long experience of security matters, understood that the two men were hiding something, as if there was a missing link in their drama.
The logical solution, according to the officer, was to find out if the men had some sort of narcotics concealed somewhere in their bodies. They were given food laced with a special medical substance, added by a doctor who worked at the police station clinic.
Within a few hours, both of them wanted to go to the bathroom in a rush – and, as expected, the visit to the bathroom revealed that the two men had 50 transparent balloons in their stomach, each balloon containing 20 narcotic tablets. The tablets – there was a total of 1,000 – were known to pharmacists and police officers working in the anti-narcotics field.
Caught red-handed with evidence and facing interrogation, Rigor and Dawood had no choice but to confess to their crime. They admitted to everything: the fight was staged so that they both could go to prison and sell their tablets, which had a narcotic effect, to other inmates. The pills had been bought from a friend called Kassim, a dealer who had vanished.
The two accused admitted that they had carried out this crime before, starting bogus fights and selling pills to addicts for a fat profit. They themselves were alcoholics who both drank and sold bootlegged liquor.
Following the confession, the police arrested the two men and hunted down their friend, the dealer. All three were sentenced to a jail term of several years.
Disclaimer: The names mentioned in this article have been changed. Similarities to actual events may be incidental.
