Wayanad: Four excise officials who were on duty at the Muthanga checkpost earlier have been suspended for accepting bribe of Rs 50,000 from a drug smuggling gang. The Excise Commissioner issued an order in this regard on Tuesday.
The smugglers had brought MDMA, a banned narcotic drug, in a car from Karnataka on March 21, 2022.
An official communiqué of the Excise Department stated the four have been suspended from service pending inquiry. The action was based on the report of Vigilance wing of the Excise Department.
Excise inspector T H Shafeeq, excise preventive officers PK Prabhakaran, TB Ajeesh and civil excise officers MK Balakrishnan and KK Sudheesh are the personnel facing disciplinary action.
Prabhakaran and Sudheesh were already under suspension in connection with another bribery case reported earlier.
The charge
According to the communiqué of the excise department, three youngsters who were nabbed by the cops with MDMA and the instrument used to inhale the drug were later let off without registering a case by the accused after taking a bribe of Rs 50,000.
The incident was reported to the Vigilance wing by a prison inmate. Fasir, a convict in another case, had shared the matter with the latter during his imprisonment.
Drug seizures on the rise
Of late Wayanad has become a preferred drug trafficking route for smugglers.
With a high number of MDMA seizures, almost every day, the National Highway 766 (NH766) connecting Bengaluru and Kozhikode through Wayanad, has become the ‘hot route’ for narcotic smugglers as well as law enforcement agencies, through which large quantity of drugs including MDMA flow to the state.
MDMA or Methylenedioxymethamphetamine is a synthetic drug sans any odour and smell. It is easy to use and can be carried in small quantities and hidden easily in the body as well as vehicles.
The total seizure of MDMA by both police and excise departments of the district was 1756.8 gramme by July 14, this year, the total value of which is between Rs 35 lakhs and Rs 53 lakhs in the local market.
MDMA is commonly known as Molly or Ecstasy.
