Imphal: A 40-year-old Manipuri woman and a 21-year-old youth were arrested on the charge of unauthorized possession of 422 grams of brown sugar worth around Rs 50 lakhs in the international market.
The two alleged traffickers have been remanded into judicial custody till January 10 for further necessary investigations, the police said on Tuesday.
Acting on a tip-off, a team of Wangoi police assisted by the locals of the Paobitek village about 15 km from Imphal, rushed to the house of one Sesant Rasejar alias Petru, 40 at Paobitek Mamang Likai village in Imphal West district and recovered 422 grams brown sugar from her possession.
Based on the inut provided by the woman after preliminary interrogations, police found that Sesant Raseja, wife of Allaudin, 43, was running a illegal drug trafficking racket with a local youth identified as Md Wangmayum Chaoba alias Nurul Islam, a resident of Mayang Imphal Bengool Makha Leikai, about 20 km from Imphal.
The police managed to arrest Md Wangmayum from his residence on Sunday.
This is the first time in the year they were booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. In 2022, a total of 450 kgs of the brown sugar had been seized from different smugglers and a total of 621 cases have been registered under the ND&PS Act, the police said.