The Tambaram City police on Saturday (August 31, 2024) conducted raids at flats where mostly college students from a private educational institution reside and seized ganja and other narcotic substances from their premises.
Acting on specific information that the students were allegedly using drugs, including ganja, Tambaram City Police Commissioner Abin Dinesh Modak instructed his officers to conduct a special raid at the site. Under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police, Tambaram, C. Mageswari, the police personnel carried out the special operation near SRM College at Abode Valley, Potheri.
Buzzing with major universities and colleges, the city has more than 5,00,000 students attending various colleges and schools within the jurisdiction of the Tambaram City Police. These institutions have students from all over the country. These universities by their sheer size have students staying at the periphery of the university campuses, lodging themselves at rented buildings in the gated societies thus taking the shape of a micro city.
Explaining the reason behind the operation, Tambaram City Police Commissioner Mr. Modak said, “The local criminals as well as the dropout students, in a well organised manner create a thriving criminal ecosystem by indulging in selling drugs, running extortion rackets, trading in protection money and hiring criminals for assault on innocent students. Hence strict action needs to be taken.”
Tambaram City Police arranged a massive search operation in Abode Valley apartment at Potheri. This residential complex has 22 towers; each tower has four floors, and each floor has eight flats. The total number of flats is around 688 where around 3,000 students stay.
The operation was carried out with 1,000 policemen with 168 teams, which started in the early morning of Saturday. The search operations led to the seizure of ganja from 15 students; ganja chocolates, bhang; tobacco (hookah) and a huge cache of liquor bottles. The operation led to registration of 20 cases and arrest of 21 people. The apartment has 60 abandoned two-wheelers and one four-wheeler. Some of them were suspected to be stolen for which the verification is being conducted, he said.
A+ category rowdy Selvamani, 29, of Guduvanchery, who had spread his network around the apartment complex, was also secured in the operation and five weapons (swords and knives) used for threatening the university students were recovered, a police press release said.
The police have also arrested a owner of a Dhaba from Uttar Pradesh who procured ganja chocolates from the U.P. and sold it to the students. “We have also secured digital data, to further identify the criminals, who are perpetrating crime, supplying drugs and influencing the innocent students to consume drugs and make them a pawn in the extortion business,” said Mr. Modak.
