KOCHI: The police have been busting a lot of ganja trafficking rackets in the city. But it seems that the big sharks in the ganja trade are yet to be caught though middlemen always land in the police net. In Kochi city itself, the shadow police team under the Special Branch was able to book nearly 11 cases in connection with ganja trafficking in the last two months and arrest those who were bringing the contraband to the city. "It is always the agents who are caught by the police and not the bigtime dealers. After every arrest of an agent and seizure of the contraband, the case gradually dies down.
No proper followups are made to bring the major supplier or ganja cultivator to book," a senior police official said.
The official said that unless the big sharks were tracked down and nabbed, the flow of ganja and its related products would continue in different parts of the state. "We used to keep track of those who transport ganja by collecting intelligence inputs from various sources. Once we bust the racket, we hand over the case to the respective police station.
It is up to the officials concerned in the respective police station to do further followup ," an official in the Shadow Police team said. Another police official said that while it was crystal clear that all the ganja consignments were coming from Idukki district, no concrete step was being taken by the departments concerned to check the cultivation of ganja in Idukki district.
The official added that a majority of the ganja consignments still went unnoticed as the police and the other enforcement agencies were able to seize only 20 percent of the consignment being trafficked in the state.