AP Police arrests five in connection with the marijuana sale through Amazon

Five more people, including a father-son duo, have been arrested in connection with the marijuana smuggling through e-commerce site

PGurus Newsdesk

November 27, 2021

Five more people, including a father-son duo, have been arrested in connection with the marijuana smuggling through e-commerce site

5 held for marijuana sale through Amazon

Andhra Pradesh police have arrested five people in Vizag in connection to the marijuana sale through an online e-commerce portal. The marijuana sale racket was busted by the Madhya Pradesh police.

The Madhya Pradesh police have arrested two persons who were registered with Amazon as vendors.

The investigations so far revealed that a person named Srinivas Rao was acting as the contact point of two men from Madhya Pradesh and was supplying marijuana from Visakhapatnam to Madhya Pradesh as an ayurvedic medicine to control diabetes.

Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) Joint Director S Satish Kumar told reporters that the gang was active for the last 7-8 months and it is suspected that 600-700 kg contraband was supplied through this route.

He said they were widening the scope of the investigations to other e-commerce platforms suspected to have been used by the accused for peddling the substance.

The official said the questioning of Mukul Jaiswal and Suraj Pawaiya arrested in Madhya Pradesh would bring out more facts to light. Bhind police arrested the duo last week and seized over 20 kg of dry marijuana from them.

The duo had registered on Amazon as vendors to supply stevia dry leaves for sugar control and were using GST numbers of other companies. They had Srinivas Rao as the contact point in Visakhapatnam.

Explaining the modus operandi, Kumar said the two men from Madhya Pradesh used to send invoices to Srinivas Rao, who pasted the same on the package and handed it over to pick-up employees of Amazon.

Srinivas Rao was arrested during vehicle checking in Visakhapatnam on November 21 and the police recovered from him a small quantity of marijuana. Based on his confession, police searched a house from where 48 kg of dry marijuana, packaging material relating to Amazon, a weighing machine, and other items were recovered.

The police also arrested Srinivas Rao’s son Mohan Raju alias Rakhi, J Kumaraswamy, B Krishnam Raju, and Venkateswara Rao.

The accused includes pick-up associates and drivers of a van who were helping Srinivas Rao in the illegal activity.

Following the directions of Director General of Police (DGP) D Gautam Sawang said that tight vigil is being kept on the online sale of drugs and marijuana as well as on private transport companies in the State, said SEB Commissioner Vineet Brijlal.

[With Inputs from IANS]

PGurus is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel and stay updated with all the latest news and views

For all the latest updates, download PGurus App.