Puri: Police seized brown sugar worth approximately Rs 55 lakh from an SUV near a school in Puri town here in the district. 

In this connection, Puri Town Police arrested 4 drug peddlers under section 21(c)/29 NDPS Act r/w sec- 25/27 Arms Act. and seized Rs 7.32 lakh cash from their possessions. 

The accused persons were identified as Chintu alias Sumanta Sundara (28) of Kanas area in Puri district, SK Subed (21) of Jaleswar area in Balasore district, Imtu alias SK Imtiaz (28) of Jatani area in Khordha district and Bapu alias Satyajit Das (48) of Khordha town in Khordha district. 

Acting on a tip-off about presence of some inter-district drug peddlers in an SUV parked in front of Gadadhar High School at Lokannath Road under Town Plice Station in Puri and deal for selling banned contrabands like brown sugar, a special team of Puri Police headed by SI Shrikant Sahoo of Town PS conducted raid at the spot and apprehended four accused persons. However, one more accused person managed to flee the scene. 

During the raid, the police found 538.5 grams of brown sugar worth around Rs 55 lakh and seized several items including 1 country made pistol loaded with 04 live ammunitions, 6 smartphones, 3 Keypad phones, Rs.7,32,000/ cash, 1 SUV (KIA Seltos bearing Regd. No- OD-02BR-8900), 2 motorcycles (TVS Apache - Regd. No- OD-33 AD-8360 and Yamaha MT-15 - Regd. No-OD-33AF-2501) and 1 Royal Enfield Bullet bearing Regd. No- OD-02CM-5992 and one motorcycle from the spot. 

During investigation, police found that some of the accused persons have records of NDPS cases in different districts like Khordha and Balasore in the past. 

The accused persons used to procure the contraband articles like brown sugar from places in West Bengal and supply to Khordha and Puri via Balasore-Bhadrak-Jajapur-Cuttack and Bhubaneswar to earn money and procure fire arms to expand their drug racket, the Puri police said.