Excise burns 1,566 cannabis plants near Kadugumanna
Kerala excise and forest staff destroyed 1,566 fully grown cannabis plants in six plantations about four kilometres inside forest near Kadugumanna in Attappady. Mathrubhumi places the plots on Achchanvettumala in Padavayal village and calls the work Operation Thandari. No cultivator was identified.
🇮🇳 Achchanvettumala, near Kadugumanna, Attappady, Palakkad · India
Kerala excise officials destroyed 1,566 fully grown cannabis plants in six plantations about four kilometres inside forest near the Kadugumanna settlement in Attappady, Palakkad.[1]They collected samples, cut the plants and burned them.[1]The Hindu said the team set out on Saturday morning and that the plants were ready for harvest.[1]
Mathrubhumi reported the same count of 1,566 plants as a joint excise and forest operation, Operation Thandari, on Achchanvettumala in Padavayal village, four kilometres north of the Kadugumanna settlement and inside Mukkali forest station’s second block.[2]It said assistant excise inspector M. B. Rajesh of the Agali range led the party, which walked in through a steep ravine.[2]
Excise said the growers had not been identified and that the inquiry would look at cultivation in the Attappady forest and along the Tamil Nadu border.[1][2]
Photos and video
Uniformed officers and other people stand among tall cannabis plants in forest, in the photograph Mathrubhumi published with the Attappady report.Photo details
The Hindu, citing officials, says the team set out on Saturday morning. Mathrubhumi's account was published at 3:07 a.m. on 19 September 2026, so the hour of the destruction is not settled between the two.
The map marks Agali in Attappady. Achchanvettumala and Kadugumanna were not given a separate point in the geographic sources checked.
A separate police destruction of about 7,300 plants in Pudur on 24 September is a different event.
Police in Udaipur district uprooted and seized 779.79 kg of green ganja plants grown illegally in the hills at Khara Kupiya, Mandwa. Three NDPS cases were registered at Mandwa police station against three residents and investigation began.
Police destroyed 467 cannabis plants growing in a villager's house compound at Binayipur in Nabarangpur district, Odisha, and arrested him. The Nabarangpur police registered a case under the NDPS Act, and a sub-divisional police officer gave the account of the raid to reporters.
Sepahijala superintendent of police Bijoy Debbarma said joint police, Tripura State Rifles and BSF teams destroyed at least 1.5 crore ganja plants in Sonamura subdivision over the past year, causing an estimated Rs 1,000 crore loss to the illegal trade. He said the crackdown lay behind a 2 November attack on a BSF team at Ashabari, after which police have arrested 21 people.
Koraput district police and excise teams destroyed 30,000 cannabis plants in joint raids, 12,000 of them at Atal Guda in the Boipariguda block and 18,000 in the Nandapur block, the district superintendent of police said. Koraput police said the Nandapur destruction covered about nine acres of hilly land near Kasandi and Dabuguda.
