Five held in Vizag for online supply of ganja

Visakhapatnam, Nov 27 (IANS) Andhra Pradesh police have arrested five people so far in connection with online marijuana sale racket busted by Madhya Pradesh police with the arrest of two persons who were registered with Amazon as vendors, a top police official said on Saturday.

The investigations so far revealed that one Srinivas Rao acting as the contact point of two men from Madhya Pradesh was supplying marijuana (ganja) from Visakhapatnam to Madhya Pradesh as an ayurvedic medicine to control diabetes.

Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) Joint Director S. Satish Kumar told reporters that the gang was active for last 7-8 months and it is suspected that 600-700 kg contraband was supplied through this route.

He said they were widening the scope of the investigations to other e-commerce platforms suspected to have been used by the accused for peddling the substance.

The official said the questioning of Mukul Jaiswal and Suraj Pawaiya arrested in Madhya Pradesh would bring out more facts to light. Bhind police arrested the duo last week and seized over 20 kg dry ganja from them.

The duo had registered on Amazon as vendors to supply stevia dry leaves for sugar control and were using GST numbers of other companies. They had Srinivas Rao as the contact point in Visakhapatnam.

Explaining the modus operandi, Kumar said the two men from Madhya Pradesh used to send invoice to Srinivas Rao, who was paste the same on the package and handing it over to pick-up employees of Amazon.

Srinivas Rao was arrested during vehicle checking in Visakhapatnam on November 21 and the police recovered from him small quantity of ganja. Based on his confession, police searched a house from where 48 kg of dry ganja, packaging material relating to Amazon, a weighing machine and other items were recovered.

The police also arrested Srinivas Rao's son Mohan Raju alias Rakhi, J. Kumaraswamy, B. Krishnam Raju and Venkateswara Rao.

The accused include pick-up associates and driver of a van who were helping Srinivas Rao in the illegal activity.