KOCHI: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has arrested a Thiruvananthapuram man in connection with the seizure of 328.87 kg of ganja from a truck at Uttukotai in Tamil Nadu last week. The man was identified as Sreenath M of Kalikavala in Thiruvananthapuram who was the receiver of the smuggled ganja.
It was on Saturday that an empty truck was intercepted by the NCB team and the ganja was found concealed in 150 packets inside a specially made cavity of the vehicle. The NCB had arrested Dubash Sankar of Kodungaiyur in Chennai, the driver of the truck for the crime. Later, during the interrogation, the NCB received information about Sreenath who was into ganja peddling at the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border for the past four years. He was arrested by the NCB Kochi team led by Superintendent Ashish Ojha on Sunday.
The illegal ganja cultivation in India is largely concentrated around the Naxal-infected Andhra-Odisha border areas. The ganja from this region finds its way all over the country including Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal and is smuggled across the ocean to Sri Lanka. "The difficult terrain make this area inaccessible for law enforcement agencies to conduct periodic destruction of illegally grown ganja. The other major ganja cultivation region in the country are the hilly terrains of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Further, the north-eastern states of India are also vulnerable to ganja cultivation due to their favourable climatic conditions and inaccessible area," said Amit Ghawate, Zonal Director NCB.
He said the seizures of ganja have been increasing and the traffickers have been transporting ganja by road using various types of vehicles. "This is the second seizure involving a substantial quantity of ganja by NCB, Chennai, in the last two weeks," Ghawate said.