The Prohibition and Excise Department and the Visakhapatnam District Police have arrested over 180 persons who were allegedly involved in smuggling ganja from the Agency areas of Visakhapatnam, in the last two years. This apart, in Visakhapatnam Central Jail, there are about 441 remand prisoners of which 208 are from other States such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and New Delhi.
This clearly indicates that smuggling of ganja from the remote and nondescript villages in the Agency areas of Visakhapatnam has gone pan India.
Commissioner of Department of Prohibition and Excise, P. Lakshmi Narasimham, told The Hindu that ganja from the Visakha Agency, especially the ‘Sheelavathi’ variety, is now the most sought after weed in the country and probably abroad. “The rate varies from ₹2,000 per kg to ₹50,000 per kg as it gets more refined and finds buyers in metropolises. We are an detailed inter-State approach to curb the menace,” he said.
The kingpins are in based big cities and the possibility of involvement some influential persons cannot be ruled out.
At the State level, it has already been decided to have an inter-departmental task force comprising men from the Prohibition and Excise, Police, Revenue, horticulture and forest departments.
“We are now planning to involve Central agencies such as Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Narcotics Control Bureau and Customs. Recently, in a case, the DRI in one single raid had seized about 6,000 kg at Raipur in Chhattisgarh, on a tip off from the AP police.
This is the type of coordination and cooperation that we are looking for, and it has to extend to all enforcement agencies across the States,” said Mr. Narasimham.
National meet
To begin with, plans are afoot to host a national conference to address the issue. “We will invite all stakeholders and enforcement agencies from the southern States to chalk out a long-term plan,” he said.
Though the cultivation of the weed is spread across the nine mandals of the Agency area, the local farmers, especially in the interior parts, are yet to develop economically.
“They are in the same state they were 10 years ago. This clearly indicates that the trade is in the hands of a few persons,” said Superintendent of Police (Visakha rural) Rahul Dev Sharma.
