THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a daring operation, the shadow wing of the City Police nabbed a wholesale ganja peddler from a naxal-infested area in Andhra Pradesh. This could probably be the City Police’s first daring operation in alien terrain. The officers recovered the contraband weighing 325 kg from the accused. The wholesale price of the seized narcotic is pegged at Rs 2 crore, while the retail price will run into several crores.
Srinivas aka Sreenu, 21, of Vizag was arrested after a six-member team from the city raided the naxal-dominated area near Tuni in East Godavari district. The city police had earlier seized 136 kg and 10 kg ganja in two separate raids. Four people- three Malayalees and an Andhra native- were arrested in total with relation to these cases.
The police received information regarding the ganja peddling during an investigation on the earlier cases. City Police Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Gurudin said the police team left for Andhra after obtaining intelligence inputs on their movement.
“The team had left for Andhra on May 6 and conducted the operation on Thursday night,” Sanjay said. “It was a daring operation because the naxals have a strong presence in the area. The striking feature of the operation is that we undertook the task on our own. The Andhra police only arrived after we arrested the culprit. As soon as the operation was over, the team hurriedly left the area and approached the nearest police station,” he added.
Since the current seizure was an extension of the case registered at Poonthura Station, the new case was also recorded there.
For the City Police, this is the biggest ganja haul in the recent past.
The arrests were enforced by DCP R Aadithya, Special Branch A C Pramod Kumar, Narcotic Cell A C Santosh Kumar, Poonthura SHO O Sabu, shadow police SI Sunil Lal, ASIs Gopakumar, Arun Kumar and Yasodharan.