BY TC News Desk
Agartala, 8th November 2023: A joint team of police, Forest department and BSF personnel destroyed a large cannabis plantation in a protected forest area in Kadamtala police station on Wednesday morning. The operation, which started before dawn, created a lot of commotion among the local people. The incident took place in Manuyatila village under Bhabanipur Panchayat of Kadamtala police station.
According to police sources, the operation was based on a secret tip-off. A team of 40 personnel, led by five police officers, namely Arup Debbarma, Sub Inspector Tapan Das, Biswajit Bhowmik and Shubhankar Saha, along with forest staff and BSF jawans from Bhabanipur camp, left for the spot on Tuesday night. They reached the location around 5 am, when the villagers were still asleep. They then started cutting down the cannabis plants, which covered about 30 acres of land. The operation lasted for about one and a half hours.
Kadamtala police inspector Shyamsundar Reang claimed that they destroyed about 20 to 25 thousand cannabis plants. The officer-in-charge of Kadamtala police station, Subrata Debnath, said that the operation was part of the ongoing efforts to make the area drug-free, as per the directives of the higher authorities. He said that the cannabis plantation was done by some outsiders, who were involved in the drug trade. He also said that the police were trying to identify and arrest them.
The question that arises now is, how did the forest department remain silent when such a huge area of the protected forest was cleared and planted with cannabis? This is the topic of discussion among the concerned people of the area.
