“Moorkhan” Shaji is a subject of interest for drug enforcers in Kerala.
The law wants the elusive 46-year-old from Idukki in connection with several large-scale hashish seizures in the State.
A top investigator attached to the State Excise Enforcement Squad (SEES) said Shaji’s propensity to change his smuggling methods often and switch associates continually like a cobra moults its skin had earned him the nickname.
The SEES suspect Shaji to be part of a larger Idukki-centred drug cartel that regularly moved hashish from marijuana growing regions in Paderu in Andhra Pradesh to Kerala and from there via cargo boats and air freight to the Maldives for huge profits.
Meblin, an alleged associate of Shaji, also topped the wanted list of hashish traffickers.
An official described Meblin as Shaji’s vaunted “chef” who “cooked” marijuana to make hashish. The gummy cannabis concentrate fetched a higher price than unprocessed marijuana in the drug market.
Idukki-based cartel
The Idukki-based hashish cartel is also of a national security interest to law enforcers. Investigators suspect that a part of the profit from hashish smuggling is ploughed back to armed Maoist irregulars who control-marijuana growing regions of remote Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
A former Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) official said Maoists had undeniable influence in nearly 800-odd outlying villages in the Paderu region in Andhra Pradesh.
Scores of subsistence-level farmers in the area had turned over their smallholdings, an estimated 12,000 acres, to experienced growers from Idukki to cultivate marijuana at the instance of the armed rebels.
The annual harvest season is from September to January. It peaked in December. Much of the marijuana was converted into easily transportable and more potent hashish cakes and cannabis oil in improvised backyard facilities.
The official said Malkangiri district of Odisha, near Paderu, was also a centre of illegal marijuana cultivation. The relatively lawless Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border was the primary source for unprocessed marijuana peddled in Kerala.
Maoists have increasingly recruited ganja cultivators from Idukki in Kerala to run cannabis farms in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. At least 12 of them are languishing in the Mohana district sub-jail in Odisha along with several Maoists on drug charges.
Investigators said smugglers, a growing number of them unemployed youth and college students, also sourced raw marijuana from Raigada, Mohana, and Gajapathi districts in Odisha and from Karimnagar, Srikakulam, Vishakhapatnam, and Warangal in Andhra Pradesh.
They smuggled the drug into Kerala hidden inside cavities of private cars or on inter-State buses and trains. Marijuana also came into Kerala from Anakapalle in Andhra Pradesh, usually hidden in jaggery consignments.
Unbridled supply
Narcotic enforcers in Kerala are focussed on arresting the kingpins of the drug trade and their top lieutenants to prevent cartelising of the illegal business. The law has tasted some measure of success in disrupting smuggling networks. However, the principal sources of cultivation and supply remained untouched.
In 2019, the SEES alone seized 80 kg of hashish. The unit impounded 18 vehicles and arrested 24 persons, most of them low-level carriers. It also took cash, ₹35 lakh, and sharp-edged weapons from the accused.
However, officials said the detections were just the tip of the ice-berg.
Successful networks still operated behind the cover of seemingly legitimate businesses. They were fast integrating into multinational criminal groups. Excise Minister T.P. Ramakrishnan had formed the secretive SEES in 2019 to combat the menace. Excise Commissioner S. Aanathakrishnan has operational control of the unit.
