Sunday November 25 2007 09:01 IST RATAN K PANI
SAMBALPUR: Over the years, cultivation of hemp or ganja or its like in the interior areas never visited by any official has become a major source of money for the Left wing ultras.
The Maoists are repeating the time-tested method already used by their cadre in neighbouring Jharkhand to fund the banned group’s activities.
The police have also linked the illicit trade to the spate of bank robberies. The robberised, they feel, could have a Naxal link with the cash being channelled to them either in the form of protection money or extortion from bigger groups who operate from their ‘liberated zones’. Police personnel, Excise and Revenue officials had to trudge 12 km of inhospitable terrain to Kudanali and a neighbouring village in Naktideul block on Monday last before they could lay their hands on the hemp cultivation spread over 20 acres of land. Police destroyed the hemp valued at Rs 16 cr.
Similar detection in Kandhamal in November last year was claimed to be the biggest haul in the country worth a whopping Rs 116 cr.
And more recently on Thursday, 6,000 hemp plants valued at Rs 2.5 cr were destroyed in the forests of Khajuripada and Sunajhari of Boudh district which of late has become the meeting ground of the Naxals for their onward journey down south for the formation of ‘Red Corridor’.
Maintaining that he has received similar reports of hemp cultivation from farflung areas of Malkangiri district, SP Satish Gajbhaiye said the police would come down heavily on the illicit trade. Even Sambalpur SP Sanjay Kumar had expressed apprehension that money from hemp cultivation is being channelled to the ultras. There has also been a report of the Naxals being involved in bank robbery in Sundargarh.
While involvement of Left wing ultras in such cases in Orissa is yet to be established, going by available data, bank robbery has been reported from Rourkela, Barbil and Baripada which are located close to Maoist-infested areas on Jharkhand border.
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