Drug racket busted, ganja worth Rs 2.5 crore seized at Medchal

HYDERABAD: The prohibition and excise task force officials busted an interstate ganja peddling racket and arrested two people on the Outer Ring Road at Medchal.
The officials seized 410 kg of contraband worth ₹2.5 crore, along with a cargo van and three mobile phones from their possession. The arrested were identified as Ganesh Ramaswamy (27) and Vijay Shankar Kulkarni (53), both residents of Osmanabad in Maharashtra.

According to excise enforcement director VB Kamalasan Reddy, the state task force teams, along with the Medchal excise team, monitored the suspects' movements for 20 days.
The accused had devised an elaborate plan to transport the contraband from Odisha via Palasa in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh in a van by concealing ganja packets beneath a load of jackfruit to evade detection during routine law enforcement checks.
"The suspects were planning to distribute the drugs in smaller packets across Bidar, Tandoor, Vikarabad, and Hyderabad," Kamalasan Reddy said.
Since January 1 this year, excise sleuths registered 1,531 NDPS cases and arrested 2,666 people. They seized 710 vehicles and 8,387 kg of ganja, 32 kg of alprazolam, 16.2 kg of Hashish Oil, 1.1 kg of cannabis oil, 6.3 kg of opium, 673 grams of MDMA, and 75 LSD blots.
As part of the special anti-narcotics operation carried out at Dhulpet, 111 NDPS cases were registered, and 456 kg of ganja was seized during the same period.