Little did the State Excise Enforcement Squad (SEES) bargain that an innocuous social studies teacher in a rural school in Andhra Pradesh (AP) sat at the apex of a large-scale ganja smuggling racket centred around Thiruvananthapuram.
A three-month-long undercover operation conducted by the SEES and the Tamil Nadu police busted the cover of the alleged kingpin, Brucelee, 42, a native of Uchakada in Neyyattinkara Taluk.
They arrested him with 176 kg of ganja in two-kg packets concealed in two Tamil Nadu registration cars near Nanguneri toll gate in Eruwadi police station limits in Tirunelveli district on February 28.
Investigators said trusted ganja cultivators in Maderu, Narasipattanam and Rajahmundry in AP helped Mr. Brucelee maintain his robust supply chain.
Mr Brucelee’s arrest, investigators claimed, helped them dismantle a clandestine commercial-scale ganja smuggling network that supplied the narcotic in bulk quantities to street peddlers in the capital.
The T.N. police have issued a lookout notice for Mr. Brucelee’s alleged frontman in Thiruvananthapuram, Sunandan, and the former’s 19-year-old son concerning the ganja haul.
Investigators said Brucelee had used his cover as a teacher as an alibi for his regular and highly successful inter-State ganja smuggling runs. It also helped Brucelee to remain off the law enforcement’s radar for nearly a decade.
However, Brucelee’s luck seemed to run out on December 12, 2024, when the SEES arrested one Akshay, a 24-year-old first-time drug offender, with 16 kg of ganja near Kumarapuram.
The SEES confiscated two mobile phones from Mr. Akshay, who refused to give the passcode for one device.
While in judicial remand, investigators said a police informer told them that Mr Akshay boasted he had not broken down under questioning and that the identity of his ganja supplier remained a secret. Digital forensic work helped the police identify Mr Brucelee’s phone number, and they soon got his Aadhar card number and photograph.
They secretly identified him when he disembarked from a train from AP at Thiruvananthapuram Central and got the number of the car that arrived at the railway station to recieve him.
Fast tag records of the vehicle showed its regular movement between AP and Kerala. The SEES and T.N. police, headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police Tirunelveli, Dr. Prasanna Kumar, put an active trace on the vehicle and used cell phone tracking to intercept the drug consignment, effectively choking at least one conduit of ganja into Thiruvananthapuram. Excise Commissioner Mahipal Yadav coordinated the operation.
Published – March 16, 2025 07:10 pm IST