4 held for growing opium poppies in mango orchard in Andhra

Malepadu (Andhra Pradesh), March 15 (IANS) Andhra Pradesh's Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) police arrested four people for illegally growing opium poppy in a mango orchard at Malepadu village in Chittoor district.

Acting on a tipoff, Madanapalle SEB officials raided the mango orchard of B. Nagaraju on Sunday and found a plot of opium poppy cultivation inside the orchard.

Police took two workers, Lakshmanna and Somasekhar, from the orchard into custody and interrogated them.

"During interrogation, the duo confessed that the orchard's owner and the former's brother-in-law Nagaraju were cultivating the crop," said an official.

Before the police raided the orchard, the duo smelled that the officials could swoop on them and started destroying the opium poppies by ploughing them with a tractor.

Police caught them in the ploughing act and arrested the two and later destroyed the illegal crop.

Meanwhile, they also managed to nab Nagaraju on Sunday night who was on the run and probed him further.

Nagaraju admitted to the police that he was growing opium poppy on a plot of 10 cents land and planted nearly 15,000 of the banned plants.

To avoid any suspicion from outsiders, he set up three layers of hedges around the poppies to carry out the cultivation in stealth.

His motive was to grow the opium poppies and then sell them away for higher profits.

All the accused belong to Kathivaripalle village in Malepadu panchayat, who have been produced in the Court and the tractor seized by police.