Police arrest narcotic smugglers in Jamshedpur, recover 750 kg of opium

Saraikela / Adityapur: In a major breakthrough, the police team on Monday recovered 750 kg of opium and 624 bottles of liquor from Padampur village under Kharsawan police station area in neighbouring Seraikela Kharsawan district.

Addressing a press meet at Auto Cluster in Adityapur on Monday evening, SP Mohammad Arshi said that during the raid the police team also seized seven mobile phones and four motorcycles from seven smugglers in the raids.

Acting on a tip off, the police raided Padampur village under Kharsawan police station area. The police recovered 52 boxes of liquor from a house. A total of 12 bottles of wine was found in each box. The criminals during interrogation confessed that opium is traded in the locality. On the basis of insights provided by those arrested police seized 48 sacks of opium and nine sacks of powdered poppy. Several police officers including DSP Rakesh Ranjan were present at the press conference.

Smugglers informed the police that since the forest of Kuchai falls in the dense Naxalite area, it was easy for them to cultivate poppy. The smugglers took advantage as people were scared to enter Naxal den.

The 624 bottles seized in 52 cases has a mark of Arunachal Pradesh. In the lockdown, criminals minted a lot of money by selling it at high prices. According to police, criminals have sold hundreds of cases of liquor from Arunachal Pradesh in lockdown. The brand name of all alcohol is King Gold. Liquor of this brand is allowed to be sold only in Arunachal Pradesh.

The criminals from Padampur village comprised of  Ugrasen Mandal aka Pokalo, Ashok Lohar, Vikas Kesari, Manas Mandal, Rajkumar Keshari, Raj Bandia aka Laden, Sapan Kumar Sahu aka Jhantu

The team that undertook the raid comprised of Kharsawan Block Development Officer Mukesh Machuva, Kharsawan Police Station Incharge Sanoj Kumar Choudhary, Seraikela Police Station Incharge Naveen Prakash Pandey, Amada OP Vinod Kumar Singh, apart from Kharsawan Police Station Abhimanyu Kumar, Akhilesh Kumar, Raju Rana, Karuna Kumari, Shweta Kujur, Chhotu Kumar , Anup Ranjan Bakhala, Sandeep Tirkey, Gaurav Kumar from Saraikela police station and armed police forces from both the police stations.

The illegal business of Padampur in Kharsawan has links with Punjab, Haryana. The value of the seized goods is in crores of rupees.