A police team, while conducting a search here, found about 1,000 bundles of banned tobacco products hidden in 20 cartons along with rice bags on Wednesday.
Preliminary inquiries revealed that a lorry driver R. Natarajan (28) had been in contact with a wholesale merchant identified as Zia-Ul-Haq of Sevvaipettai in Salem City, who procured banned tobacco goods from Bangalore and supplied them through the lorry driver, who is also from Salem, to different parts in Tamil Nadu.
During the last five months alone, the lorry driver, who had confessed to the police, had brought banned tobacco items and returned with cash from the local merchants here. As the returns were very high, the lorry driver, with his accomplice, Ayyanar (30) of Salem, travelled to various cities and delivered the tobacco items to the shops identified by Zia-Ul-Haq.
The vehicle, which was intercepted on Mudukulathur-Paramakudi highway, had stocks of 37 rice bags each weighing 25 kilograms. Initially, the driver claimed to have only rice. When the police team asked for the invoice however, he could not produce it. A search by the team revealed that they had hidden bundles of banned tobacco products.
A case -- under IPC sections 120b, 188, 269, 270, 273, 328 and 417, Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act 2003, sections 7, 20 (1), 20 (2) and Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, sections 52 and 59 -- has been registered.
The FIR has the names of five accused including two merchants Sahubar Sadiq (48) of Sikkal and his brother Sarbudeen (55) of Mudukalathur to whom the lorry driver confessed to have delivered the tobacco and collected ₹5.50 lakh cash.
A senior police officer said that the lorry driver and his accomplices had, within a short span, made huge profits from the sale of banned tobacco products and that they were operating more than 30 trucks as a cartel throughout Tamil Nadu and other southern States from Salem. The procurement point appeared to be Bangalore and Hyderabad.