Goswami was an Indian national who was extradited to the US to face narcotics charges alongside the Akasha brothers and a Pakistani.
But little is said about Goswami who was the most notorious fugitive in the African and Indian soil.
Goswami was a wanted drug fugitive operating internationally and may have been sent to the Akasha’s as an agent meant to eat the Akasha cartel from within although it has never been confirmed.
BACK IN the ’90s, large black suitcases started appearing as luggage, mostly on flights headed from Mumbai international airport to Cape Town in South Africa.
There was something unusual about these bags, though. No passenger seemed to be accompanying them. A Mumbai Police team of ‘encounter specialists’ would later find that at least five similar black bags were put on planes at the international airport every day by airport loaders.
Photocopies of the airport luggage tags of these bags would be faxed to Cape Town, from where another person would collect these bags. “Each bag had nearly a thousand tablets of Mandrax.
We laid a trap several times but no one ever accompanied these bags,” says an officer who was then part of the Anti-Narcotics Cell. Police would later identify the man behind the cartel supplying Mandrax tablets as Vijaygiri ‘Vicky’ Goswami.
Police believe Goswami used to receive ephedrine from Nigeria and use it to cook meth at a factory in Mombasa and supply it to several countries.
This was discovered after police in nigeria arrested an alleged drug dealer selling ephedrine on the streets of Kalyan who after several investigations led them to a warehouse where they recovered 18.5 tonnes of ephedrine.
The story of Goswami’s journey, from a bootlegger in Ahmedabad India to an alleged international druglord who owned a private jet and a chain of hotels, involved several godfathers and, like many such Mumbai stories, a dash of Bollywood.
Alleged druglord Vicky Goswami and Bollywood star Mamta Kulkarni are believed to be in a relationship since ’90s, though they deny it
Goswami started supplying drugs in Ahmedabad till he eventually moved to Africa, from where he had been operating the drug empire.
Investigations also showed that his home in Nyali estate was also under armed police guard. This sparked intense questions within police circles and corridors of justice, especially because at that time, Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet had withdrawn armed guards from opposition Coast governors on the pretext that extra police officers were needed elsewhere.
Questioned by journalists, Goswami, commonly known as “Vijay” or “Vicky” defended the police deployment, saying he needed police protection at his home and around him because he was facing threats from the Indian state.
“Indian police are after me and they have tortured many people, including my relatives, to implicate me,” he claimed.
Then Coast Regional Police Commander Joseph Wanjohi confirmed that police had been deployed to guard Vijay following a security needs assessment.
“Although he is not a VIP the state has an interest in his safety and that is why he is being guarded,” said Wanjohi, who also reasoned that Vijay also needed to be guarded by state security to ensure he did not vanish before the end of his extradition case.
Within Mombasa, rumours had been swirling that India’s intelligence operatives were in the coastal city to try and capture Goswami, a wanted drug fugitive who had also been linked to Dawood Ibrahim, one of India’s most wanted criminals.
We established that Goswami was paying for his police protection but we were unable to determine the source of his wealth given that during his bail application, he had claimed immense trouble getting money and securities.
What remains a mystery and a pointer to possible collusion between him and different security agencies is how and why Goswami was able to enter Kenya and live comfortably for years, or whether he was enjoying some protection from some people in authority.
What also remains unknown is why after a long extradition process, Kenyan authorities suddenly, decided to expel the four to the US. On October 25 this year, US media reported that the Akasha brothers had pleaded to six charges in a New York court, including drug trafficking and obstruction of justice through bribery of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials to evade extradition to United States where they were under indictment.