BHUBANESHWAR: In a major drug haul, Balasore police on Friday arrested six peddlers and seized over 10 kg of brown sugar having a market value of Rs 11 crore. One of the accused is a native of Madhya Pradesh.
Acting on a tip-off about a deal involving a huge quantity of brown sugar, the police conducted a raid at the Fuladi area in Sahadevkhunta on Thursday and nabbed the peddlers along with the contraband stuffed in six polythene packets.
Some of the peddlers managed to give police a slip, said sources. The police's initial investigation suggests that the accused - Ayub, SK Hussain, SK Safiq alias Laden, SK Raju, SK Sameer and Rintu Tarei had procured the brown sugar from the bordering area of West Bengal and Assam.
While Ayub is a resident of Madhya Pradesh, the other five peddlers are natives of Arad Bazar in Balasore. The accused had planned to supply the contraband in various parts of Odisha, said the police. One motorcycle and scooter each, six mobile phones, one Aadhaar card and Rs 21,000 cash have been seized from them.
In July this year, the Special Task Force (STF) of the Crime Branch arrested a drug peddler in Arad Bazar and seized over 1 kg of brown sugar worth Rs 1 crore from him.
Sources said the drug peddlers are procuring brown sugar mainly from West Bengal by either using private transport or boarding buses. Some peddlers are also carrying the contraband through the railway route up to Jaleswar and then Balasore.
In a few instances, police officers found out that even women and children were engaged by the drug peddlers to transport brown sugar. Ganja transportation is difficult but small quantities of brown sugar can be carried very easily which sometimes it becomes difficult for the police to nab the peddlers, said sources.
"Our recent investigations have indicated that West Bengal is the gateway of the brown sugar trade in Odisha. We have started coordinating with our West Bengal counterparts and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to share information with us about brown sugar sellers and peddlers operating mainly in Lalgola in Murshidabad district and Nadia district," said a senior police officer.