325-kg drug haul from naxal-infested Andhra by Kerala police; peddler arrested

_{Thiruvananthapuram: In a daring cross-border operation deep inside naxal-affected areas in Andhra Pradesh, a shadow police team from the capital city nabbed a notorious drug smuggler, a 21-year-old AP native called Sreenu alias Sreenivas on Friday. A huge drug cache of 325 kg of ganja worth over Rs 1.5 crore was seized from him.}

_{Both Sreenu and the drugs, stuffed in over 100 gunny sacks, were transported to the state.}

_{Sreenu's arrest was recorded at the Poonthura police station here on Friday.}

_{“This is one of the biggest ever haul of drugs by the city police,” said Thiruvananthapuram city police commissioner Sanjay Gurudin, who led the operation.}

_{Sreenu was arrested in a covert operation carried out by the shadow police in the interiors of naxal-dominated regions of East Godavari district.}

_{Sreenu was arrested when he, along with two of his accomplices, handed over the huge ganja stash to the shadow police members, who posed as buyers from Kerala.}

_{“Being a naxal area, these drug peddlers come armed with guns and other dangerous weapons. Our team had to use both cunning and force to overpower the gang,” the commissioner said.}

_{Two of the gang members managed to escape.}

_{It was an arrest made in the city a couple of months before that took the police team to naxal-infested East Godavari in search of the kingpins.}

_{In February, three Malayalis and an Andhra Pradesh native were arrested with nearly 150 kg of 'ganja'.}

_{The interrogation of these 'drug mules' and an examination of their mobile call records revealed that a substantial chunk of drugs into the city came mainly from Narsipatnam and East Godavari, in the north-eastern part of Andhra Pradesh.}

_{“In fact, most of the wholesalers the city police had nabbed recently came from these areas. It was clear that the drug mafia was concentrated in these highly inaccessible dangerous areas,” the commissioner said.}

_{The police team had spent a few days in the interiors of East Godavari in disguise, trying to map the drug routes and finally zeroed in on the peddlers. “To catch them in their den is a high risk operation,” the commissioner said.}

_{Besides the commissioner, the other members of the team included deputy commissioner of police R Adithya, special branch assistant commissioner Santhosh Kumar, Poonthura station house officer Sabu N G, shadow SI Sunil Lal and shadow ASIs Gopakumar, Arunkumar and Yashodharan.}