The Pune rural police have seized 168 kg marijuana worth more than Rs 30 lakh and claimed to have busted an interstate gang involved in smuggling of the contraband. The police have arrested 12 people, including five women, in the coming operation on the Pune-Solapur highway near Patas in Pune district.
A team from the Yawat police station, led by Inspector Narayan Pawar, received a tip-off on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday that some people were transporting marijuana from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Based on this, a trap was laid on the service road of Pune-Solapur highway near Patas, around 75 km from Pune city.
Around 2 am on Sunday, the police teams intercepted two trucks and recovered several plastic bags containing marijuana, hidden under the cabin seats of both the trucks.
The arrested suspects hail from the Krishna and Vijayawada districts of Andhra Pradesh and the Buldhana district of Maharashtra. The police have launched a probe into the source of the contraband and its possible distribution network.
Earlier in July this year, in one of the biggest marijuana hauls in Pune district by any agency, sleuths of the Pune unit of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) had arrested six people and seized 1,878 kg marijuana, estimated at Rs 3.75 crore.
