Bhubaneswar: Police arrested a 41-year-old man from Karnataka for cultivating cannabis in a forest in Kalimela area of Malkangiri district.
Lohit Arthur Sadasiv from Mysore in Karnataka, who has been cultivating ganja using hi-tech methods for the last three years in Kurmanur forest in Kalimela on Andhra- Odisha border, was caught by a team of police.
The ganja trader is reportedly an IT employee. A police team led by the SDPO visited Mysore and managed to arrest the peddler from his residence.
He used to purchase Ganja seeds through on-line mode and grows in hilly forest area in Malkangiri
Malkangari SDPO Sachin Patel informed at a press conference that the ganja grown here was being smuggled to other states.
On January 28, the Kalimela police had destroyed about 7,000 ganja plants on four acres of hilly land in Guralur forest in Malkangiri.
Police said that this the first case in which a man from outside the State was arrested by the district police for farming the cannabis.