Siliguri: In a major success against drug trafficking, the Siliguri Police Commissionerate in West Benal has arrested five persons and recovered brown sugar worth Rs 5 crore from their possession, official sources said on Thursday. An police official said that the five persons were arrested in two separate raids in Siliguri by the police.
According to police sources, the special operations group of the commissionerate and the police of Bhaktinagar police station conducted a raid in the Eastern Bypass area of Siliguri on Wednesday following intelligence inputs about drug peddling in the area. During the subsequent raid, the police arrested three persons with 4 kg 812 grams of brown sugar, police said.
The three arrested in the incident have been identified as Durga Soren, Pradeep Munda and Rashid Sheikh. Durga and Pradeep are residents of Kharibari block of the Siliguri subdivision. Rashid is a resident of Malda's Kaliachak. Police said that the accused were trafficking a huge quantity of brown sugar from Malda to Siliguri.
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The brown sugar was supposed to change hands at the Eastern Bypass of Siliguri, police said. In another case of drug trafficking, the Siliguri Police and Special Operation Group conducted another separate operation and arrested two people along with brown sugar worth lakhs of rupees from their possession.
The arrested ones have been identified as Barsai Kisku (36) and Bandhan Majhi (40). Both are residents of Darjeeling. The arrests were made following specific intelligence inputs that drugs will be smuggled in the Bagrakot area of Siliguri. Following the inputs, the SOG conducted a joint operation in the Bagrakot area with the police of Siliguri police station.
The police said that they saw three persons standing with a scooty in lane number 20 adjacent to the FCI godown in Bagrakot. One of the three fled on spotting the police, but two were nabbed. A total of 600 grams of brown sugar was recovered from their scooter the market value of which is lakhs of rupees, police said.
The market value of the recovered brown sugar in both the cases is approximately Rs 5 crore, Siliguri Police Commissioner Akhilesh Chaturvedi said. The arrested ones were produced in court on Thursday. The police commissioner said that investigation into the matter is going on.
