In one of the biggest cannabis bust in the State, police have made a seizure of the banned substances valued at around Rs 2.26 crore from a specially carved out secret chamber of a truck and arrested three Uttar Pradesh-based suspected drug peddlers in the Orkel police station area in Malkangiri district, police said on Tuesday.

A total of 2,256 kilograms of cannabis locally called ganja were seized during patrolling by a special squad. The drug peddlers who had procured the contrabands from the Chitrakonda area were smuggling it out to northern States and the National Capital Region, said Sub Divisional Police Officer, Anshuman Dwivedi.

The cannabis haul would have fetched the drug peddlers more than Rs two crore. The seized contraband was of superior quality, which is sold at Rs 10,000 per kilogram.

The arrested drug peddlers- Pavan Kumar Pandey, Amarjeet Yadav, Krishna Yadav, who were all from Uttar Pradesh- were later remanded to judicial custody under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance (NDPS) Act.

The harvesting season of hemp plantations has come to an end since March last. However, the collection of the consignment by members of inter-state ganja smuggling racket had been hit due to the Coronavirus scare and multi-phased countrywide lockdown. With the unlock phase commencing, the smugglers are currently gearing up to collect the consignments through a network of middlemen. The police have stepped up vigil on the drug peddlers through local intelligence gathering networks.

The seizures of huge quantities of ganja were successfully executed only because the police could get vital clues and ground-level feedback from the local people added senior SDPO Dwivedi.

The cannabis routed through Odisha by organized drug syndicates is much in demand in other States because its price is on the lower side coupled with its superior quality. While one kg of ganja is sold in the black market in Odisha at Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000, in Delhi and bigger cities, the contraband’s price shoots up to Rs 20, 000 to Rs 3,000 per kg depending on demand and supply, he concluded.