STATE: Twelve kg of ganja was seized from seven women who were using their infant children as carriers from an interstate bus terminal in Tripura, a police official said on Tuesday.

The superintendent of police of North Tripura district, Bhanu Pada Chakraborty, said that the women were arrested on Monday evening after the seizure by the police.

Acting on specific inputs, a police team had rushed to the Dharmanagar inter-state bus terminus in North Tripura District and spotted the women, all of whom hailed from Bihar, wandering there aimlessly with six children, Chakraborty told PTI.

The women were found to have reached Tripura by train and were trying to reach farway Bihar by road, the official said.

“The police took the women and their children to Dharmanagar police station and searched them. In the course of the search, 12 kg of contraband were found hidden in their underwear,” the SP said over the phone.

“Four to five kg of ganja were recovered from the person of the children, which has become a new tactic to smuggle out ganja from Tripura … However, this was the first time that children as young as six months to one and a half years were used. It is clear that the ganja smugglers have started using children to smuggle ganja to evade the police,” he said.

All the women were booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and remanded to judicial custody when produced before the local court. As the children were too young, their mothers were allowed to take them to the jail.(PTI)