The East Godavari district police busted a ganja smuggling racket, which has links to several States. They arrested six persons of Visakhapatnam, Odisha and Punjab, said Superintendent of Police M. Ravindranath Babu.
The gang was procuring ganja from the Chitrakonda forests in Odisha and supplying it to Punjab, Nagaland and other States, the SP said on Monday.
On a tip-off, a team led by Peddapuram in-charge Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) S. Murali and Prathipadu CI K. Kishore Babu conducted the raids and seized the ganja stocks being loaded in a lorry near Annavaram.
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Later, the police team raided a dhaba being run by one of the accused, Malkith Singh from Amritsar, Punjab. He is at large, Mr. Ravindranath Babu said.
Malkith Singh, the kingpin of the gang, had been running the dhaba on National Highway-16 at Bayyavaram village near Kasimkota. He allegedly roped in other gang members, Hera Singh of Punjab, Seman Pangi, Laba Khara, Rohit Pangi and Krishna Khemudu, from Odisha.
The gang had been sourcing the contraband from the Chitrakonda forests in Malkangiri district with the help of Pangi Narasimha Rao of Vanabalingam village in Visakhapatnam Rural mandal.
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Malkith Singh had been stocking ganja in the storage spaces created in the beds arranged in a room in his dhaba and transporting it through lorries, said Mr. Ravindranath Babu.