The customs department on Monday said that its officials had confiscated hashish and ganja worth over Rs. 100 crore from Tiruchirapalli district in Tamil Nadu.
The officers of Tiruchirappalli Customs Preventive Commissionerate seized narcotic drugs from a shed which is located on a prawn farm in the Mimisal village.
The Tiruchirappalli Customs Preventive Commissionerate in its official X (formerly Twitter) handle said that they seized the substances, based on the information they received about the location of huge quantities of narcotic substances. In the post, they said that on receiving the information about the location of huge quantities of Hashish and Ganja stowed in a shed, located on a prawn farm in Mimisal village in the Pudukkottai district for being smuggled out of India to Sri Lanka.
the officials immediately reached the spot. They found that the farm was locked and there was nobody at the location. The lock was broken, in the sight of witnesses and the shed was examined thoroughly. At the location, they found 48 bags containing illicit goods like Hashish and Ganja. The officials immediately seized the bags and moved them to a nearby Customs office for further analysis, as there was no power supply available in the shed. After testing it was substantiated that the goods were narcotic drugs. They are 100 kg of Hashish and 876 kg of dry ganja worth Rs.110 crore and Rs.1.05 crore.
Under the provisions of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, of 1985 and the Customs Act, the goods were confiscated. The officials also said that a probe is underway to recognize those who were involved in the smuggling.
The incident happened just a few days after the arrest of Jaffer Sadiq. He was apprehended by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on the grounds of association with an international drug trafficking case. He was Chennai West deputy organizer of the DMK’s NRI wing and also a producer of Tamil films. The DMK party ousted him recently. The NCB called him the mastermind and kingpin of the international drug trafficking network that extends between India, Australia, and New Zealand. The NCB had been searching for him and raided, his locations in Tamil Nadu.
The Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency, in February, apprehended three people and confiscated 50 kg of narcotics making chemical pseudoephedrine during their search at a godown in Delhi.
Recently, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) confiscated narcotics valued at Rs. 27 crore from a passenger, who arrived at the Meenambakkam Anna International Airport. Another incident happened near Mandapam in Tamil Nadu, where 99 kg of Hashish worth over Rs. 108 crore was confiscated.
(Input from various sources)
(Rehash/Lavanya Beeraboina/MSM)