Police arrest rice smuggler

Chennai, Dec 21 (UNI) The city police arrested a notorious smuggler in North Chennai area, and seized over 43 bags of ration rice from a lorry, which was meant to be smuggled to Andhra Pradesh, at suburb Redhills a few days ago.

Police said, the arrested person, P Thirumalairaj who used to smuggle the ration rice to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka was so far involved in smuggling of 1,182 bags of ration rice allegedly at Rs 48 lakh, in the last two years. More than 8 cases were pending against the arrested.

However, in a routine vehicle checkup, police intercepted a lorry and seized 150 bags of the ration rice at Redhills-Tiruvallur road near here yesterday night.

Police arrested the lorry driver Karthikeyan, who confessed that he was smuggling the ration rice to Sulurpet in Andhra Pradesh.

Based on his information, police were looking out for Saminathan and Viswanathan of Chennai who were also responsible for smuggling.

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