Ganja plantations of Andhra Pradesh are focused in the surroundings of Paderu. We got lucky in our quest to find out the intricate routes of the smuggling racket when a temporary staffer at Paderu’s almost-deserted excise station promised to get us in touch with a ganja smuggler-turned-informer. Vinayak (name changed to protect identity) had a long innings as a ganja farmer before he got busted.
Now he is an informer. He had access to someone at Kotapaderu – around 50 kilometers from Paderu – who could show us around some ganja plantations. Vinayak said he would see what he can do. He came with a friend to our lodge room at night. They offered to take us on a guided tour of the ganja plantations if we dressed for the occasion.
We chucked denims and wrapped the dhotis like the locals do. We hired a jeep to Kotapaderu. The road to Kotapaderu passes through a forest. There are hardly any houses on either side of the road. The hill station is not easily accessible. A perfect haven for pot to thrive. We stopped the jeep near a mud track that cut into the forest. We followed the torchlight in Vinayak’s hand. Our guides hop off the track as if they were on a stroll in their backyard. We had to request them to pause several times for us to catch our breath. Finally we reached a thatched shed by a river. We will have to to wait here until daybreak. We were woken up by Vinayak in the morning. His friend had already crossed the river on a recce. After some time, he appeared across the river and signaled that it was safe for us to proceed.
Vehicles that were detained for transport ganja lies on the premises of Paderu excise station.We crossed the river and trekked up a hillock into a misty plain. The valley, barely visible through the misty curtain, has massive ganja plantations, Vinayak told us. Getting there was out of the question.We took another route that led to a tribal hamlet filled with thatched huts and the occasional tiled-roof house. The settlement owes its prosperity to ganja.
Almost all huts have a satellite dish. Demand for television has shot up. Young tribesmen are scrambling to buy motorbikes. The sleepy village of Kotapaderu has even witnessed the emergence of some motorbike workshops of late. The boom is understandable. Tribal youths get Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 as wages per month.We get curious looks from elderly tribal women. Vinayak told them something in Telugu to justify our presence. We walked through a farm land to a modest ganja field of about 50 plants.
Most of the houses have such fields. They get medium-scale dealers as customers while the big clientele are monopolized by Maoists who run the massive plantations. The rebels do not allow anyone else to cultivate ganja in large scale.
