Mayor Saud questioned in police probe over alleged manipulation of Thinadhoo population records

Thinadhoo City Mayor Saud Ali was brought in for questioning on Monday, in a police investigation into allegations that the island was granted city status in 2023 by artificially inflating its residential population.

The complaint was lodged with the police by a civilian.

Saud told Sun that he was brought in for questioning to the Thinadhoo Police Station at 10:00 am. He said that the interrogation lasted one-and-a-half hours, during which time he was questioned over a compliant lodged by someone alleging manipulation of the city’s population records.

I raised questions as to whether everything wouldn’t be properly checked before granting Thinadhoo city status, he said.

Saud said that the police did not say when he would be brought in for a second round of questioning.

Thinadhoo was designated as a city on August 30, 2023 by then-president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih during the 2023 presidential campaign. The incumbent administration decided it would not revise the decision.

But a year later, allegations emerged that that the actual population of Thinadhoo is under 10,000 people – which is the legal requirement for an island to be designated a city.

The allegations stem from discrepancies in the population list maintained by the Thinadhoo Council and the Department of National Registration (DNR), with the latter declaring the population of Thinadhoo as 7,924, while the former places the population at 10,150.

The Thinadhoo Council has been accused of artificially boosting the population by including the names of at least 115 deceased individuals as well as people who had removed themselves from the island’s registry decades back to the list.

In November 2024, Ahmed Raghib, a former magistrate, filed a constitutional case with the High Court challenging Thinadhoo’s city status.

However, the case was rejected in December 2024, citing lack of original jurisdiction to hear the case.

The issue was also raised by North Thinadhoo MP Saudhulla Hilmy with the Local Government Authority (LGA) and the Parliament.

The figure at the center of the allegations is the city’s mayor Saud Ali, who is accused by Saudhullah of committing serious criminal offenses.

Saud also has a complaint filed against him with the LGA by Raghib, accusing him and other councilors of taking salaries prescribed for council members of cities even before Thinadhoo was granted city status.

Saud has denied the allegations against him, maintaining that Thinadhoo received city status in accordance with the law.

He accused Saudulla of having a personal vendetta against him, and of being a “traitor” to the people of Thinadhoo.