The arms and ammunition seized during the raid included among other things three 7-MM pistols, seven magazines, 43 rounds of 7-MM ammunition, and a currency note counting machine.
File photo: SNS
In one of the biggest ever drug busts in Odisha, the Special Task Force (STF) wing of the crime branch on Tuesday made a seizure of 3.1 kilograms of brown sugar valued at over Rs three crore in the international drug market.
Besides the drug consignment, Rs 65.32 lakh in cash, arms, and ammunition were seized from a house in Udayalane under Nayagarh Town police station jurisdiction during a raid, and a suspected drug peddler identified as K Vickey Rao was taken into custody, said Deputy Inspector General of Police, STF, Jay Narayan Pankaj.
It may be recalled here that the STF has confiscated five KGs of brown sugar worth Rs 5 crore at Rasulgarh Chowk on 19 June 2020. That was incidentally the biggest ever drug bust in the coastal State.
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The arms and ammunition seized during the raid included among other things three 7-MM pistols, seven magazines, 43 rounds of 7-MM ammunition, and a currency note counting machine.
The drug peddler is being quizzed to ascertain the modus operandi of the racket. The investigation is still continuing, DIG Pankaj said.
The banned substances are making their way to Odisha from Murshidabad in West Bengal. Balasore district bordering Bengal has become the gateway to drug peddling networks in the State. The source point of the brown sugar trade in the State owes its origin to Murshidabad. The organized rackets of drug peddlers based in Balasore have spread their network to major urban centres- Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Rourkela, Sambalpur, and Puri- of the State, STF officials concluded.
The Odisha STF, in its anti-drug drive, has made a seizure of more than 47 KGs of brown sugar valued at Rs 47 crore and arrested 122 drug peddlers since 2020. Similarly since 2020, in the drive against illegal arms, STF has seized 67 firearms.
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