Visakhapatnam Agency has acquired the dubious distinction of being the new ‘ganja capital’ of the country.
Blessed with abundant greenery and a daunting landscape, the Agency area has become the new hub for the cultivation of ganja, putting it ahead of Chamba Valley in Himachal Pradesh which is also known to be a major producer of the contraband.
Mass confiscations of the contraband in recent days indicates that the ganja trade is here to stay in Visakhapatnam district unless drastic steps are taken to eradicate the menace.
Last Friday, the District Police destroyed 64,000 kg of dry ganja at a dumpyard on the outskirts of the city. The ganja was seized over a period of three years from various parts of the Agency. The destroyed contraband was valued at around ₹64 crore.
Days later, on Tuesday, officials from the Excise and Prohibition Department seized about 6,000 kg of ganja from a stock point in Munchingputtu, an interior tribal mandal in Visakhapatnam district.
‘Undisputed leader’
“The fact that several metric tonnes of ganja, not a few kilos, are being seized on a regular basis is ample proof that Visakha Agency is now the undisputed leader in the ganja trade,” an official said.
Visakha Agency is now no longer merely a hub for cultivation of ganja but is also at the centre of a smuggling network, with a well-oiled machinery ensuring that the ganja grown here is distributed across the country.
For the enforcement agencies, it has always been a cat and mouse game with smugglers and traffickers. The latter have proved to be a step ahead, as they elude detection by devising innovative methods to smuggle the contraband out of the forest areas.
Right from using specially fabricated vehicles, typical to the Colombian style of smuggling cocaine, to using ambulances and women to smuggle them out, the smugglers are giving a tough time to enforcement agencies.
Students become couriers
The latest trick that the smugglers have up their sleeve is to involve students in the smuggling network.
Deputy Commissioner of Excise and Prohibition, T. Srinivasa Rao, said that there were some cases when officials detected ganja packets in the bags of school- and college-going students.
“The aspect of students being used as couriers in the ganja trade is a knotty issue,” explained Attada Babujee, Superintendent of Police, Visakhapatnam Rural Police. “In some cases, the students are completely unaware of what they are carrying. This happens mostly in the case of schoolgoing children. A known person puts a few ganja packets in the children’s school bags and asks them to deliver it at a specified place. For their ‘help’, the children are promised chocolates, petty cash or the opportunity to watch pirated versions of latest movie releases on mobile phones,” Mr. Babujee said.
“However, there are many college students who sign up to act as couriers with full knowledge of what is being smuggled. They seek payments of ₹500 to ₹1,000 per consignment. In some cases, the smugglers have been known to even buy a two-wheeler for the students to enable them to make more trips per day. Thus, the students are groomed as long-term prospects,” Mr. Babujee added.
Climbing the ladder
Then there is the worrisome case of ganja addicts who turn traffickers, giving a tough time to enforcement agencies.
These addicts, unlike the students mentioned by Mr. Babujee, hail from the plains, especially Visakhapatnam city.
The Visakhapatnam City Task Force (CTF) had taken into custody over 30 such students in the last two years, of who most are addicts who have turned into traffickers and peddlers in order to fund their addiction.
“The addicts are lured by kingpins into smuggling the contraband to places like Goa, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. In Goa, the ganja is exchanged for cash, or LSD or cocaine, which is again routed through these youths to other cities, sometimes even Delhi and Mumbai,” said A. Trinadh Rao, Assistant Commissioner of Police in the CTF.
Dark web
“Addiction can ruin students’ lives, which is why investigation and enforcement has to be done with a degree of sensitivity because we have to keep in mind that the youths have a long life and a career ahead of them,” said Commissioner of Police R.K. Meena.
“But a worrying factor is the rising use of dark web in the ganja trade by the students. The dark web leads people into to a world of drugs and crime. There are instances where the young minds have used the dark web to source, fund and sell the drugs, irrevocably ruining their lives,” Mr. Meena said.
