Jaleswar: Despite repeated raids by STF (Crime Branch), the police and excise officials, drug peddling has not yet been curbed in Jaleswar and some other parts of north Odisha. The Jhadeswarpur slum area under Jaleswar block in Balasore has now turned out to be a hub of drug trafficking, a report said.
It was alleged that raids are often being carried out in the area, but the illegal activities are yet to be stemmed.
On the other hand, the drug mafia has been adopting novel ways to push the trade by hoodwinking the enforcement officials.
A few days ago, the drug mafia was using a minor boy in the illicit trade.
Saturday, police conducted raids in the area and detected another novel way of drug peddling which was to evade the glare of enforcement agencies.
A team of police officials led by IIC Manas Deo raided the slum area. Two people, on seeing the police, managed to flee the spot. The police could not catch them, but suspected bad motive behind their presence in the area.
They frantically searched the area and found a pile of sand from where they recovered 250 gm of brown sugar in a packet. The seized brown sugar is valued at Rs 25 lakh.
January 15, the police had arrested two drug peddlers and seized 22 gm of brown sugar from them in Puruna Bazar area of Bhadrak.
February 6, 2020, the police had busted a drug racket in Jaleswar and seized 50 gm of brown sugar worth Rs 5 lakh. Three drug peddlers were arrested.
June 22, 2020, an STF team of Crime Branch had arrested two drug peddlers in Jaleswar and seized brown sugar worth Rs 40 lakh from them. The two were the associates of notorious drug trader Sheikh Saeed.
In June, 2019, the police had seized a huge cache of drugs. Brown sugar weighing 1.655 kg was seized with the arrest of four youths on the Balasore-Phuladi road. This racket had been pushing dug peddling in the area. Their trade had extended from Balasore to Bangladesh via West Bengal.
March 31, 2019, excise officials of a mobile squad had seized brown sugar worth Rs 12 lakh and arrested three persons on NH-60 near Jamalapur under Jaleswar block. Acting on intelligence inputs about the drug trafficking, excise officials had raided a hotel and a car. Three youths were carrying 120 gm of brown sugar from West Bengal and taking it to Bhubaneswar. The officials also seized the car, three cell phones and cash.
PNN
