Kondagaon: Police seized 648 kg ganja (cannabis) worth Rs 1.30 crore from a truck in Chhattisgarh’s Kondagaon district and arrested a smuggler from Haryana, a senior officer said on Friday. The smuggler was bringing ganja from Andhra Pradesh hiding around 290 plastic packets inside the water filter machine in the truck, which has been arrested by the police during a search of vehicles in Kondagaon. The matter is of the city Kotwali police station area.
To take action against ganja smugglers, the police have put up a checkpoint on NH-30. Everyday vehicles passing through here are also being searched. During the checking of vehicles, a truck coming from Jagdalpur’s side was stopped by the police. The water filter machine was kept in the truck. When the police got into the truck and saw the machine, during that time the soldiers started smelling of ganja the machine was pulled down and opened.
Inside the machine, 648 kg of ganja was hidden in 290 packets in plastic sacks, which the police recovered. The smuggler has given his name as Satbir alias Gurjar (58), who hails from Haryana. The smuggler told the police that he was smuggling ganja from Andhra Pradesh to Haryana via Chhattisgarh. Cannabis was to be delivered to a local smuggler in the market of Haryana. The police have now started investigating the matter.
SP Divyang Patel of Kondagaon said that a checkpoint has been made on the National Highway to take action against smugglers. Earlier, the Kondagaon police arrested 4 accused while smuggling pieces of white sandalwood from Andhra Pradesh. 985 kg sandalwood pieces stuffed in more than 10 plastic sacks was recovered from them. The estimated cost of the smuggled sandalwood has said been around Rs 2 crore. Among the arrested smugglers, 3 were from Karnataka and 1 from Odisha.