An online marijuana sale racket was busted by Bhind police in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, leading to the arrest of two persons and seizure of 20 kilograms of the contraband, an official said.
The accused were operating the racket through leading e-commerce firm Amazon, which was getting two-thirds of the profits generated, the official said, adding that evidence was being collected to see if it could be prosecuted for providing a platform for such drug transactions.
“On a tip-off, we arrested Kallu Pawaiya (30) and dhaba owner Brijendra Tomar (35) from Bhind Gwalior Road on Saturday and recovered 20 kilograms of marijuana," Bhind Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Singh told PTI.
“Kallu used to source the marijuana from Vishakhapatnam through a reputed international e-commerce firm to Gwalior, Bhopal, Kota, Agra and other areas of the country. Brijendra helped him in the business," he said.
Kallu has so far sold one tonne of the contraband and transacted business worth Rs 1.1 crore, the SP said.
“Kallu ran his company under a fake name with PAN and GST number etc. The e-commerce firm got 66.66 per cent of profit from the illicit business. We are collecting evidence to prosecute the e-commerce company under section 29 (part of criminal conspiracy) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance (NDPS) Act," the SP added.
Reacting to the news, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) demanded immediate action from the Centre and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) against Amazon “since it acted as seller, collected money, posted on their website, earned commission”.
CAIT national president BC Bhartia and secretary general Praveen Khandelwal said before registering a seller, Amazon should have done KYC to know about the credibility of the seller.
“Further, Amazon ought not to have allowed sale of illegal items like Marijuana. Further, we are at loss to understand the why a technology giant does not use its Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning(ML) to identify sale of illegal items while they continue to use these technologies to identify and copy the products of poor MSMEs and Indian Manufactures for creating their own private label products,” they said.
They added, “Government and law enforcement agencies, including NCB, need to take immediate action and initiate criminal proceedings against Amazon and its top management for this illegality. If marijuana can be sold through their portal, then they would be encouraged to trade in illegal supply of arms or other anti- national activists and money laundering.”
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