Youths roped in as pilot riders to help ganja smugglers

Visakhapatnam: Call it an unemployment-fallout, or a craze for bikes, mobiles or easy money — students and unemployed youths in Vizag and East Godavari region are acting as pilot riders on bikes to help ganja smugglers carry their loads through roads safely. What these boys do is alerting or passing on key information to these gangs over mobile phones as and when there are enforcement checks along the way.

Sources said inter-state and inter-district ganja smugglers are adopting innovative methods for transporting the contraband from the point of purchase to their destinations. In order to evade police and excise squads, smugglers lure students by giving them bikes, mobiles phones and money. Each of these youths is given Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 in cash per trip, depending upon the quantity that is transported through various areas, besides a mobile phone and a motorcycle for the duration of their assignments.

A senior police officer said the students on pilot bikes travel ahead of the ganja-laden vehicles and look around along the way for squads doing vehicle checks. If they locate a squad, they would soon alert the approaching vehicle laden with ganja and the like, and help such vehicles find alternative routes to escape from the scene. Superintendent of Police (Visakha Rural) Rahul Dev Sharma said cops are now chalking out strategies to book the students and unemployed youths who help drug peddlers this way, under relevant sections of the NDPS Act.

Intelligence sources said drug peddlers from Tamil Nadu and Odisha are also supplying country-made firearms (tapanches) to ganja suppliers in Vizag and East Godaravi regions to eliminate rival gangs in the trade.