CHENNAI: In the last week of July, civil supplies CID sleuths swooped down on the grocery shop of P Balachandran at Mothirapuram in Pollachi. The tip off came rice was stacked in huge sacks there.
Delay by a day would have given the racketeers time to move a tonne of rice across the inter-state border, about 35 kms away and it would have made its way to Palakkad in Kerala.
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It is no wonder the smugglers from Kanyakumari use autorickshaws to take the rice across the border. Luxury cars, which are rarely intercepted at the checkposts are increasingly put to use. Far north, a bus driver and conductor of Andhra Pradesh State Transport Corporation were detained for aiding the smugglers to transport 1.5 tonnes of rice in the bus bound for Mallanur from Tirupattur Town.
Polished either in the mills in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, the rice which originally comes free under the Tamil Nadu PDS system, is sold for not less than Rs 40/kg.
Intensified enforcement has made no difference, as the problem lies with the source itself. Explaining the modus operandi in Coimbatore, an officer said the PDS staff who siphon off the stock sell it to agents of the smugglers for up to Rs 5 per kg. “It was sold for Rs 2 until two years ago. The price has shot up due to hike in market price,” he said. The moment the commodity crosses the border at Walayar, the price shoots up to Rs 16 and when it reaches Palakkad and gets polished, it is sold at Rs 25 in grocery shops. Some traders in parts of Kerala polish it further, pack and even brand them for a higher price.
In fact, four civil supplies officials were suspended and penalty to the tune of Rs 20 lakh was slapped on various staff for aiding smuggling in Coimbatore last year, besides detection of bogus billing in huge numbers. On an average, ten tonnes of PDS rice is seized every month in the district, but actual quantity of rice smuggled could be at least five times more. “We had even seized upto 50 tonnes per month a few years ago,” a source said. In 2015, 41 rice smugglers in the district including a notorious smuggler identified as Edison from Pollachi, were held.
Kanyakumari District consumer protection association president S R Sriram said that much of the PDS rice from the affluent coastal villages goes to Kerala, in connivance with the civil supplies staffs, police personnel and agents.
