The Special Task Force (STF) wing of the crime branch made a seizure of brown sugar valued at more than Rs 1 crore in the black market after the arrest of a drug peddler from the Nayagarh district.
Giving this information, the STF in a statement issued on Monday said, “On the basis of intelligence inputs, a raid was conducted by a team of the STF at Narayani Pitha, Kantilo under Fategarh Police Station yesterday evening against and apprehended the drug peddler Hara Prasad Prusty, a native of village Chamusahi Patna village, Kantilo police station jurisdiction of Nayagarh district.”
During search, contraband brown sugar weighing 1,190 gram was recovered from the possession of the arrested accused. The consignment is worth more than Rs 1 crore.
Since the accused could not produce any valid authority in support of possession of such contraband materials, he was arrested and will be produced in the court of District and Sessions-cum-Special Judge, Nayagarh under sections 21(c)/29 of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985 provisions, it further said.
STF drive to make Odisha free from the drug menace is on since 2020. In due course of time, the force seized more than 68 kg of brown sugar across the state. Majority of drug peddlers arrested so far are members of some or the other interstate drug racket, said Deputy Inspector General of Police, STF Jay Narayan Pankaj.
The banned substances are mostly smuggled to Odisha from Murshidabad in West Bengal. The Balasore district bordering Bengal has become the gateway to drug peddling networks in the state. The source point of brown sugar trade in the state has its origin in Murshidabad. The organised 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, say STF officials.