Visakhapatnam: The Central Prison in Vizag is now flooded with ganja smugglers following enforcement agencies’ raids and arrests at various places to check the menace.
Out of the 1,100 prisoners in Vizag Jail, 380 remand prisoners were involved in the ganja trade alone – and were also going back to the crime for easy money after being released from prison.
Sources said that officials of both the excise and police departments had seized over 25,000 kg of dry ganja and arrested over 250 drug peddlers in the Vizag region between January and August 2016.
In 2015, the Vizag rural police alone seized over 30,000 kg of hemp and arrested 261 smugglers, including some inter-state drug peddlers.
Deputy superintendent of central prison, Vizag, V.S. Rao said the involvement of youngsters from parts of Vizag in transporting ganja from the interiors to other places had increased as a majority of the remand prisoners in Central Prison, Vizag, were ganja smugglers.
It’s not just in red sanders smuggling in Chittoor that Tamilians are playing a vital role but also in pushing ganja cultivation in Vizag Agency and smuggling the hemp to parts of Tamil Nadu.
The big sharks of Tamil Nadu and other parts of AP are going scot-free as the enforcement officials have failed to nab the kingpins in the trade.
Left party leaders said that if the officials failed to nab the masterminds, Vizag Central Prison would be filled with ganja transporters, or the local youth only, in the future.
