News Desk
In a nation long uneasy about the quiet rise of neighbourhood crews and politicized youth groups, prosecutors take an unprecedented step.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has asked the High Court to do something no Maldivian court has ever been asked to do: formally declare a local crew a criminal gang.
The petition, filed this week, targets a group known as Scoop —and its offshoots Scoop Kanmathi and SKP—a loose but increasingly visible network that authorities say has evolved from a neighbourhood clique into an organized crime group. Prosecutors are seeking not only to label the group a gang under the country’s new Prevention of Gang Crimes and Other Dangerous Offenses Act, but also to shut down its affiliated sports club and erase its name from public spaces.
The Gang Crimes Act, which came into force last year, was designed to give Maldivian authorities sharper tools to confront the country’s persistent gang problem. For years, police have warned that small, hyper‑local groups—often tied to specific islands, wards, or football clubs—were becoming more structured, more violent, and more deeply entangled with drug trafficking and political patronage.
But until now, no case had ever reached the point of asking a court to formally designate a group as a gang — a threshold that comes as President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu’s administration intensifies its campaign against organized crime and narcotics networks.
Since taking office, President Muizzu has ordered some of the country’s largest coordinated drug‑enforcement operations in recent memory, including nationwide raids involving more than 500 police officers, sweeping over 100 locations, and resulting in at least 80–90 arrests in a single operation.
His government has framed these crackdowns as part of a broader effort to dismantle trafficking networks and “liberate the Maldives from the scourge of drugs,” as he said during one such operation.
Officials say these actions — from mass raids to proposed amendments strengthening penalties for trafficking — have laid the groundwork for more aggressive legal strategies, including the unprecedented move to seek a formal gang designation for the Scoop group.
According to a statement from the Prosecutor General’s Office, police evidence shows that Scoop meets the legal definition of an “organized crime group”: three or more people working together to commit serious offenses or to obtain financial or material gain through criminal activity. Prosecutors say nine individuals have been identified as active members.
One of the more unusual aspects of the petition is the request to liquidate SKP Sports Club, which authorities believe functions as a front for the group’s activities. In Maldivian neighbourhoods, sports clubs often serve as social hubs—places where young men gather, train, and build identity. Over the past decade, several such clubs have been quietly linked to gang recruitment or used as cover for illicit operations.
Prosecutors have asked the High Court to order the Commissioner of Sports to dissolve SKP and to instruct the local city council to remove the group’s name—Scoop, Scoop Kanmathi, SKP—from walls, banners, and public spaces. Graffiti and murals, often coded with gang symbols, have long been a visible marker of territorial presence in Malé and other islands.
This is the second time police have submitted a gang‑designation case to prosecutors. The first was returned for further investigation after failing to meet the legal threshold. This time, prosecutors say the evidence is sufficient.
If the High Court agrees, the ruling could set a precedent for future cases—and potentially reshape how the Maldives confronts its entrenched gang networks, which have been linked to political violence, contract assaults, and drug distribution.
For years, Maldivian officials, civil society groups, and international observers have warned that gangs have become deeply woven into the country’s political and economic fabric. Reports have documented how gangs provide muscle during elections, enforce debts for drug traffickers, and operate with a level of impunity that has eroded public trust.
The new Gang Crimes Act was meant to break that cycle. But its effectiveness depends on whether courts are willing to apply its most powerful provisions—starting with this case.
The High Court has not yet scheduled a hearing. But whatever the outcome, the petition signals a shift: the Maldivian state is now testing the limits of its new legal arsenal, and the country’s long‑standing gang landscape may be entering a new phase.
