Two bundles of ganja washes ashore on Tharangambadi coast in Mayiladuthurai district

A fisherman recovered another bundle floating in the sea near Karaikal

The package recovered by a Karaikal fisherman on Friday | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The Coastal Security Group of Tamil Nadu Police recovered two bundles of ganja washed ashore along the Tharangambadi coast in Mayiladuthurai district on Friday night.

Sources in the Coastal Security Group said they received an alert from volunteers of Village Vigilance Committees and local fishermen that a couple of mysterious packages had washed ashore in the coastal villages of Chandrapadi and Chinnurpettai in Tharangambadi taluk. The police rushed to the spot and recovered the parcels tightly wrapped with packaging tape. They found bundles of dry ganja roughly weighing 3.5 kg stuffed inside.

Sources added that the recovered bundles would be handed over to the Tharangambadi tahsildar and steps were under way to register a case under Section 102 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

In a similar incident, a fisherman from Pattinamcherry, a border area between Nagapattinam and Karaikal district, found a mysterious parcel floating on the sea roughly six nautical miles from the shore.

Police sources said Viswanathan, a fisherman from Tsunami Nagar in Pattinamcherry village, came across a parcel wrapped with packing tape on Friday morning while returning to the shore. He recovered the package and handed it over at the T.R. Pattinam police station in Karaikal district.

The police found nearly one kg of dry ganja bundled inside the parcel, following which a case was registered under the provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

The police sources suspect that smugglers would have thrown the packages into the sea after encountering the patrol vessels of the Navy or the Coast Guard. After the incident, the Coastal Security Group stepped up vigil and increased patrolling along the eastern coast from Cuddalore to Muthupettai.

The police also urged the coastal villagers and fishermen to alert them if they came across any mysterious objects. The incidents came in the aftermath of the arrest of six persons by Nagapattinam district police for peddling ganja. On July 31, a large consignment of over 300 kg of ganja bound to be smuggled to Sri Lanka by sea was intercepted and seized near Vedaranyam.