Two Batswana men found in possession of 15 packages of dagga, weighing 300 kilograms and worth over P1.2 million appeared before Francistown Magistrates Court on Tuesday morning.
42 years old Thatayotlhe Loso from Tsamaya and Dintwa Pilato aged 36, a resident of Block 9 in Francistown were each charged with a single count of trafficking in narcotic drugs.
The duo appeared before Chief Magistrate Game Mooketsi to apply for bail pending the completion of investigations.
Prosecutor Chashingwa Ndadi objected for the accused persons to be granted bail arguing that the case is premature and would also jeopardise investigations which are at infancy stage.
“The police are still searching for the master mind behind this consignment of illicit drugs and he is on run as we speaking. However, the police have managed to locate his place of residence and are planning an operation of how to arrest him”, explained Ndadi.
“Should the accused persons be granted bail they are likely to alert their boss, and he will run further to evade the long arm of the law since he is wanted by the police. Furthermore, the Detectives working on this matter are yet to establish who are the owners of the Honda Fit vehicles which the accused were driving and used to transport the suspected dagga. They are yet to establish if the vehicles were stolen or not, even though they have locally registered number plates.”
Detective Constable Batlhalose Baliki told Court that the police have only the first name of the owner of the 300 kg consignment who he says is popularly known as “Nzala.”
“We arrested the accused persons on the 9th of this month at Tati Siding, following a tip off that we should be on the lookout for two Honda fit vehicles coming from the South, transporting drugs suspected to be dagga. With this information our team mounted a stop and search operation for every vehicle heading into Francistown” testified Detective Baliki.
“Upon searching the accused person’s cars, we found packages in black plastics sealed with brown Sellotape. The accused allege they were hired to ferry the packages but belonged to someone. The suspects are the small boys of the owner of these drugs who we suspect to be the master mind and part of a bigger syndicate running this drug business”, pointed out Baliki.
Baliki said the drugs came from South Africa through the Parr’s Halt border, near Makwate village in the Central District.
