Duo Held With Duplicate Cigarette Stock As Three Alleged Masterminds Remain At Large
Key Points:
- Police recover 45,600 packets of counterfeit cigarettes from Kapali warehouse
- Special team traps suspects posing as customers near Jawaharnagar Road
- Case registered under BNS and Copyright Act as manhunt continues
JAMSHEDPUR – City police have cracked down on an illegal counterfeit cigarette operation, seizing roughly 45,600 packets of duplicate cigarettes valued at approximately Rs 39 lakh. The Tatanagar region’s Mango police station led the operation, arresting two men while three alleged operators of the racket remain absconding.
Officers said the fake cigarettes were being distributed to various shops across the city before the crackdown. On the direction of the senior superintendent of police, a special team was constituted under the supervision of the superintendent of police (city) and led by assistant superintendent of police (headquarters-1) Rishabh Trivedi.
The team set up a sting operation behind Kerala Public School on Jawaharnagar Road number 17 in Mango, posing as customers. During the operation, two young men arrived on a scooter carrying a consignment of counterfeit cigarettes and were promptly apprehended by police.
A search of the suspects turned up 500 packets of fake cigarettes along with the scooter used to transport them. During questioning, the two men admitted that they had been sourcing counterfeit cigarettes from a warehouse in Islamnagar, located in Kapali, and supplying them to different shops throughout the city.
Acting on information provided by the arrested men, police raided the warehouse. There, they recovered 45,600 packets of duplicate cigarettes packed inside 19 plastic sacks. The estimated value of the seized cigarettes has been put at around Rs 39 lakh.
The two men arrested in the case have been identified as Uvaid Ansari and Ehtesham Shamim. Meanwhile, the alleged operators of the warehouse, Wali Azam, Shahnawaz Danish and S.K. Parvez, remain at large. Police said raids are continuing in an effort to track them down.
A case has been registered at Mango police station under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) as well as the Copyright Act, and further legal proceedings are underway. Investigators said they are also searching for other individuals connected to the counterfeit cigarette network.
The counterfeit trade bust follows a series of similar enforcement actions in the region targeting illicit goods and contraband networks. In a related vein, authorities had earlier seized banned drugs worth Rs 20 lakh, leading to four arrests. Mango itself has seen other narcotics-related crackdowns, including a case where a drug connection was probed after a death in the area. Elsewhere in the district, police have also carried out raids resulting in the recovery of 800 kilograms of contraband in Kapali. Separately, an operation in Sonari led to the seizure of marijuana along with two arrests, while a similar bust in Rajnagar resulted in three arrests over brown sugar.
