MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) – A surgeon who operated on a drug mule in an East Siberian town stole heroin from his stomach and was detained while high, regional police said Tuesday.
Police found a bag containing 5 grams of heroin in the surgeon’s clothes after he had performed surgery on a drug mule in the Bogotol town hospital in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, regional police said in a statement.
A video posted on the police website shows the surgeon – a burly man dressed in a dark blue training suit – being locked in a small detention cell. A woman can be heard asking “what are you being detained for?” and the surgeon says he will not comment without his lawyer.
If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in jail, the police statement said.
About 8 million Russians use drugs, and almost 150,000 people are jailed annually for drug-related crimes, 2013 figures from the Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) indicate. In a May news conference, FSKN chief Viktor Ivanov said there are about 1.5 million heroin users in Russia, which has a population of about 143 million.
Afghanistan remains the world’s leading producer and cultivator of opium, which is used to make heroin, according the UN’s World Drug Report 2013.
