Bali Police drug division detectives have nabbed three alleged marijuana dealers, one of whom had just been released from prison after serving a sentence for drug-related offences, a senior officer said Friday.
Bali Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Gde Sugianyar said the arrests were made in mid-January but the police did not immediately release the information in order to maintain the integrity of the ongoing investigation.
He later admitted that the ringleader, a man identified only as AL, who supplied the illegal substance to the three suspects, was still at large.
"We haven't arrested him yet. But the investigation is ongoing," he told reporters on Saturday.
A police report said the three alleged drug dealers - Tri Setiawan, Sugeng Riawan and Dani Setiawan - were arrested at different locations in Badung and Denpasar.
Police made the breakthrough after arresting Tri, 32, originally from Banyuwangi, East Java, on Jl. Kubu Anyar, Badung.
On Jan. 15 at 2:30 p.m, police raided his boarding house and found two plastic packages containing 9.7 grams of marijuana each and two packages of 9.5 grams of a similar substance in the pockets of his jeans.
Tri later led police to Sugeng, 30, a resident from Surabaya, East Java, who had supplied him with the marijuana. Undercover police arrested Sugeng at the Ngurah Rai bypass in Kuta, Badung, at 7 p.m. and found 42.5 grams of marijuana wrapped in a brown piece of paper, hidden between his pants and stomach.
Sugeng, a freelance tour guide, told the officers that he got the marijuana from Dani, a Jakarta native who lived on Jl. Purwosari 4 in Kuta.
The following day, undercover police nabbed Dani, who had just served four-and-a-half years in prison for a similar case, when he visited Sugeng at the latter's boarding house in South Denpasar.
Dani had four plastic packages containing 20.3 grams of marijuana each and a plastic coffee wrapper containing two marijuana packages of 9.7 grams each in his pockets.
Sugianyar said Dani confessed to police that he got the marijuana from AL who transported the drugs from Jakarta.
