9 arrested in major raid

Hans India

4 days ago

Khammam: Three gangs that were engaged in the cottage business of producing phony seeds were raided by Khammam Commissionerate police as part of a crackdown on the fake seed trade.
Commissioner of Police Sunil Dutt told reporters in Enkoor on Friday that during three different cases, police had confiscated 560 kg of counterfeit seeds valued at Rs 14 lakh, and that nine people had been taken into custody. They would continue to investigate the cases.
The defendants taken into custody were identified as Ummaneni Naresh, Annem Lakshminarayana, Guguloth Gopi, V Ramesh, Tamballa Naveen, D Ramesh, Gajula Narasimha Rao, Cherlapalli Shalivahana, and Poleti Koteswara Rao.
Meanwhile, Venigandala Srihari Rao of Himam Nagar in Enkoor Mandal and Venigandla Ravi of Bapatla in Andhra Pradesh are evading capture.
Strict steps were being made to guarantee that farmers received high-quality seeds in accordance with official directives.
'A few intermediaries were organising into gangs and defrauding farmers by offering them seeds at a discount while keeping them under watch,' he said. 'Anyone should notify local police or the Mandal Agriculture Officer right away if they see the sale of counterfeit seeds,' said the CP.
The local gangs operating in the Enkoor and Kallur mandals were discovered to be obtaining counterfeit seeds from various locations in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during the raids. According to the CP, the gangs used labels from brands such as Arunodaya, Advance 555, Pallavi Seeds, and others to bundle the seeds after treating them with rizobin. The accused were found to have several litres of rizobin chemical, weighing devices, and a huge number of empty packets.
According to Dutt, task force teams would be continuously monitoring the market to make sure that phony seeds weren't being marketed.