The poppy plants. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, March 19: Law enforcement officials have discovered opium fields spread over several acres of farmland in Kaliachak, less than 40km from the district headquarters here.

Acting on a tip-off, police officers and officials from the excise and land departments went to Mojampur village in search of the illegal opium fields this morning.

They were greeted by mature poppy plants, most with pods and some with flowers, swaying in the breeze as far as the eye could see.

“We had heard that the villagers were growing opium on 20-25 bighas (around seven-eight acres), but we saw that the scale was massive,” said Sagar Saha, the inspector in charge of the Kaliachak police station.

It will take “two to three days” to destroy all the plants.

Excise superintendent Swapan Hazra said in Mojampur alone poppy plants were growing on around 77 bighas (over 25 acres). Residents of neighbouring Naranpur and Bujruk villages, too, were allegedly cultivating poppy on large tracts of land.

The police said “people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh” bought the plants and they were smuggled into Bangladesh.

The farmers get Rs 35,000 for a kilo of opium while smugglers sell the same amount for over Rs 1 lakh in Bangladesh, an officer added.

Some villagers said the cultivators slit the pods and collect the dark sap. Each pod apparently yields Rs 1,000 worth of the sap.

“There are about a thousand poppy plants in each bigha and the worth of the opium cultivated here will run into crores,” said Hazra.

Most of the men in Mojampur fled this morning seeing the team arrive, but groups of children stood by to watch labourers hired by the excise department to chop down the plants.

Excise officials have asked the land and land reforms department to find out the names of the landowners.