Beed police could have halted poppy farming 2 years ago
Suspects let off on bail were farmers’ link with opium producers.
What appeared to be a minor oversight by the Beed police two years ago is now being viewed as a costly lapse that led to escalation of the poppy farming situation there.
Two years ago, the police caught two men from Nanded carrying poppy pods. They were later released on bail. Now their names have surfaced as suspected agents bridging farmers and opium manufacturers. Besides, the cops have found that the suspects have done the vanishing act.
Speaking to DNA over the phone, police inspector Sudarshan Munde from the local crime branch of Beed district police, who is investigating the poppy cultivation, confirmed the incident.
“In 2010, policemen from Shirsala police station caught two men from Nanded with a cache of poppy pods. A few months later, the same duo was arrested with a cache of poppy pods. Cases were filed under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. However, they were released on bail,” Munde said.
He added, “Now our investigations indicate that the two men used to purchase poppy pods from cultivators and sell them to opium producers. We went to Nanded, but could not trace them.”
He said poppy was being cultivated on 40 acres of land in Beed district. “The seizure so far has been 17 truckloads of poppy pods totally weighing 44,250 kg. We have estimated the worth of the poppy at the rate of Rs5 lakh per acre,” he said.
Munde felt more farmers might be involved. “The crackdown on poppy cultivators in Moha village of Parali-Vaijanath taluka seems to have scared poppy cultivators, who destroyed their plantations before we could catch them. A day after the action at Moha, poppy pods weighing 25 quintals were found abandoned on a road in area under Dharur police station. A search is on for the culprits,” he added.