10 things to know about Mike Kamminga, the foreigner held in Hyderabad drug scandal

Mike Kamminga, a Dutch national was arrested was arrested by the Telangana Prohibition and Excise department as an accused in the recent drug bust in Hyderabad.

Drug haze looms over Tollywood; 10 celebrities in police crosshairs

The drug scandal that was busted in Hyderabad over a month ago has brought several schoolchildren, high profile people and many from the Tollywood industry under the scanner of the Special Task Force (STF) of the Hyderabad Police for consuming Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) and Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA).

Here are 10 things to know about Mike who is currently undergoing interrogation in Hyderabad.

1) Mike was arrested on July 25, for possession of 2.6 gms of DMT (Dimethyltryptamine). The officials also suspect Kamminga of being involved in dealing of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and methylenedioxy-Methamphetamine (MDMA).

2) The Dutch national is a software professional. He is a solutions architect with Innominds, which is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mike who used to work in a branch in Hyderabad has lost his job after his arrest.

3) He has been living with his Indian origin wife Mary Kammina and two children at Nanakramguda flat for sometime. According to the investigators this is his fourth visit to India.

4) The day Mike's flat was raided, he and his wife were not at home.

"A task force official of the excise department called us and asked us to return to the house. We arrived one-and-a-half hours after the cops arrived there. After we reached, task force officials told us that they found drugs in the house and took Mike," Mary told the local media.

5) However, she has claimed that Mike has been mistaken for somebody else and the allegations are false. "I think all the allegations against Mike are wrong. I do not know on what grounds they picked him up," said Mary. She has also asserted that it is a case of mistaken identity. "I think this is a case of mistaken identity. I have seen a man who visits my residential community and looks just like Mike. Same kind of hair and beard," Mary added.

6) Mike's wife and his friends have vouched for him that he is not a drug peddler. "People who know him in my community know his nature. He is not a peddler and he never had a bad record. He is a very good employer. He trained a lot of people in the field. Friends and family will vouch for him," said Mary.

Another friend, Lukas Engelhardt has said, "The Mike Kamminga that I know, is kind, generous and such accusations seem outrageous and hardly justifiable, with the little evidence that was produced by the police."

7) Meanwhile, the police have also convicted Mike of destroying evidence. "He tried to destroy key evidence, including iPhone password, and mailing and social media account details. When he came back with his wife to his residence by the car, there was  high drama. He didn't get down from the car for a few minutes and tried to destroy the mobile phone information," a source was quoted by the Deccan Chronicle. His laptop and his phone have been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL).

8) An official was also quoted by an English daily as saying that Mike has been peddling drugs from Netherlands. "Mike's friends used to give his mother parcels saying that he asked them to ship either job-related material or some other product to Hyderabad. Mike's mother, who is in Rotterdam city in Netherlands, used to send those parcels to him in Hyderabad," an STF official told TOI.

9) Though Mike is in custody, the police are going easy on him. "As he is suffering from fever we are not pressuring him. When we asked for the phone password he said he had forgotten it...But, we caught him red handed with DMT. He will get 10 years of imprisonment," said an official.

10) Meanwhile, Mike's kins and relatives have launcehd an online campaign on Facebook called "Free Mikey" to set him free. Several of his friends have also taken to sharing short videos of themselves, talking about how long they knew Mike, and claiming that he was not a drug user or peddler.