With the pandemic severely crippling income generating avenues, youngsters, it seems, are increasingly being wooed in by the prospects of making quick bucks by turning carriers of drugs from outside the State.
The arrest of three youngsters, all in their 20s, with over a kg of ganja and 10 grams of hashish oil from the heart of the city recently, Excise officials noted, pointed towards it.
An officer involved in enforcement for long said the dropping age profile of the accused reaffirmed such a trend. “With enforcement scaled down and largely restricted to specific tip-off driven, the chances of getting away with a windfall remains alluring,” he said.
Ganja and hashish oil remain the most commonly available drugs at the moment, and Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh has emerged as the most prominent supply source, according to carriers-turned-informants of the Excise Department.
“Large-scale production of hashish oil out of ganja is rampant in Rajahmundry, and the residue ganja is sold cheap at anywhere between ₹800 and ₹1,600 a kg, unlike the better-quality ganja from Cumbum and Theni in Tamil Nadu that cost anything upwards of ₹8,000 for a kg. Since a majority of clients here cannot differentiate between the two variants, the former cheaper variant ensures a bigger windfall, all at the risk of smuggling it across the border,” said the officer.
A kilogram bought at a pittance is being sold here for ₹12,000 or upwards, and the margins get even better if it is sold in smaller lots. Youngsters also improvise to smuggle in the drugs, making them the more preferred carriers. “For instance, they can make special cabins and chambers in the most unlikeliest of places in a vehicle, and they keep coming up with new tricks as the older ones get exposed,” the officer said.
Though new pockets are emerging for drugs in the district, enforcement officials said West Kochi and Aluva remained the preferred hubs on account of ease of hiding the stuff. “It is not easy to undertake raids in West Kochi areas, as that could trigger an avalanche of protest, whereas Aluva continues to have easily-missed storage points,” said the officer.
Dedicated networks are involved in the chain of supply from carriers to those storing drugs and to the ones eventually handing them to the clients.