Brown sugar racket in Odisha jail: 7 more arrested, 9 mobile phones seized

Bhubaneswar: The police have arrested seven more persons in connection with a brown sugar racket being operated from a jail in Odisha’s Khurda district.

The Khurda Model police had busted the racket by arresting six persons, including a woman, on February 20 this year.

The police have made fresh arrests in the case after eliciting information from the accused persons during investigation.

The arrested persons have been identified as Kalu Charan Bhuyan (29) of Polsara in Ganjam district and Pramod Kumar Panda (19), Suman Sethi (19), Debasish Pattanaik (21), Puspa Naik (35), SK Ekram (58) and Amit Sahoo of Khurda district.

The police have also seized nine mobile phones by conducting raids at Khurda Sub Jail, sources said.

Notably, the police had seized around 260 grams of brown sugar while raiding a place near Gurujanga Mahotsav ground in Khurda on February 20.

The cops had registered a case under the NDPS Act and arrested six persons including SK Jafar, Laxmidhar Sahoo, Sanjay Pradhan and Manoranjan Sahoo in connection with the illegal drugs trade.

During investigation, the police came to know that the brown sugar racket was being operated from Khurda Sub Jail. Some inmates of the jail were allegedly operating the racket by passing instructions to their aides through mobile phones, sources said.