DUSHANBE, February 22, 2016, Asia-Plus – the Interior Ministry has denied information about the arrest of four police officers on suspicion of drug trafficking as ‘baseless.’

The Interior Ministry’s website reported on February 22 that information released by some media source today that four officers of the drug trafficking department at the Interior Ministry’s office for Khatlon province have been detained for drug trafficking does not correspond to the facts and is absolutely “unfounded.”

We will recall that an official source at one of the Tajik power-wielding structures told Asia-Plus Monday morning that a joint operation carried out by officers of the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) and Tajik border guards on February 20 led to the seizure of a large amount of hashish in the Shouroobod district of Khatlon province.

“Four officers of the drug trafficking department at the Interior Ministry’s office for Khatlon province were arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking and several packages of narcotic drug tested positive to hashish weighing 56 kilograms were confiscated from them,” the source said.

The source has refrained from giving further details of the incident.  

The Prosecutor-General Office has instituted criminal proceedings against the detained police officers and an investigation is under way.