Bhubaneswar: The Nayapalli police on Tuesday dismantled a ganja smuggling racket that was operating under the guise of an ambulance service and arrested four men and seized 25kg of ganja, valued over Rs 2 lakh.The accused were identified as ambulance owner-cum-driver Manoj Kumar Mohapatra (33) and his associates Biswajit Mallick (35), Prasant Kumar Pradhan (33) and Rama Krushna Panigrahi (49).“Acting on a tip-off, our team intercepted a private ambulance that was misusing its siren to evade checks. The vehicle was fitted with medical equipment, including oxygen cylinders, and one of the accused posed as a patient. Upon inspection, we discovered hidden chambers beneath the seats containing ganja packets,” DCP Jagmohan Meena said.Police sources revealed that the contraband was procured from a carrier in Cuttack and was intended for distribution in Bhubaneswar. “We are probing backward and forward linkages to identify other members of the network,” the DCP added.In a parallel operation, Khandagiri police arrested a habitual trafficker, Sheikh Jahir alias Endua Raja (31), after recovering 22 kg of ganja from his SUV. According to police officials, Jahir has a history of arrests in three previous drug trafficking cases in 2022, 2023 and 2025, besides some other crimes in that period. “We will initiate necessary legal processes to confiscate the ambulance and the SUV so that they cannot get the vehicles released,” the DCP said.The crackdown comes in the backdrop of the state police’s ‘Nasha Mukt Abhiyan’, launched on April 1, which has intensified surveillance against evolving smuggling tactics. “Since ganja is smuggled from Odisha to other states, smugglers often exploit ambulances, oil tankers, vegetable carts and other unconventional carriers to conceal narcotics. We have stepped up our intelligence networks and surveillance,” an excise official said.Last month, Subarnapur police exposed another ploy in which traffickers posed as a family — using women and a child as cover — to bypass road checks.
