Excise teams destroy 58,800 cannabis plants in Gajapati
Excise and police teams destroyed 58,800 cannabis plants across 40 acres at Murdamulli, Panaguda and Juba in Gajapati's Mohona block, put at Rs 1.5 crore. No growers were present when the squads arrived.
🇮🇳 Mohona block, Gajapati district, Odisha · India
Acting on district collector D. V. Swamy’s order, excise staff with police support destroyed cannabis plantations across the Mohona block of Gajapati district.[1][2]The teams destroyed 58,800 plants of various sizes spread over 40 acres, which excise sources put at about Rs 1.5 crore in the market.[1][2]
About 30 excise staff with two platoons of armed police raided the villages of Murdamulli, Panaguda and Juba from early morning, taking more than eight labourers to cut mostly full-grown plants.[1][2]Not a single man was present in the villages when the squads arrived after travelling more than 15 km through deep forest and mountains.[1][2]Excise superintendent Lokanath Mandia led the squads with excise inspector Damburu Dhara Gantayet, Mohona officer-in-charge Ram Chandra Thamba and Chandragiri outpost chief Abhimanyu Parida.[1][2]
Officials said it was their first such raid that year despite many intelligence reports of hemp farming in Gajapati, and called the haul only the tip of the iceberg, estimating far larger cultivation elsewhere in the tribal district.[1][2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Both opened sources are mirrors of the same 24 November 2007 Statesman report preserved by MAPINC and 420 Magazine; the original Statesman page is no longer directly available.
The article gives no separate raid date beyond its publication day, so the report is dated to publication.
No arrests, charges or identified growers were reported.
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.
