Workers destroy the poppy plants watched by police and excise officials. Picture by Surajit Roy

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

It will take two-three days to destroy all the poppy plants, the officials said.

Today, a joint team of officials from police and the departments of excise and land and land reforms acted on a tip-off and went to Mojampur village in search of the illegal opium fields. They were greeted with the sight of 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 villagers were growing opium on 20-25 bighas of land, but now we see that the scale is massive,” said Sagar Saha, the inspector-in-charge of the Kaliachak police station.

Excise superintendent Swapan Hazra said in Mojampur alone poppy plants were growing on approximately 77 bighas. The team-members said they had information that two more villages, Naranpur and Bujruk, were cultivating poppy on large plots of land.

“We will raid those two villages as well,” said Saha.

The police said the opium was bought by people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh or smuggled into Bangladesh. The cultivators get Rs 35,000 for every kilo of opium, while smugglers sell the same amount for over Rs 1 lakh in Bangladesh, they added.

The excise officials said each poppy pod yields Rs 1,000 worth of the sap. “There are approximately a thousand poppy plants in each bigha and the total worth of the opium cultivated here will run into crores of rupees, although we are yet to make an official estimate,” Hazra said.

This morning, most of the men in Mojampur fled when they saw the law enforcers, but groups of children stood by to watch labourers hired by the excise department chop down the plants. The officials said it would take two to three days to clear the fields.

Excise officials have asked the land and land reforms department to find out the names of the owners of the land. Some villagers said the growers slit the pods with razor blades and collect the dark sap.

“Earlier, farmers in these areas used to grow opium plants in fields of corn and wheat, but this year that they threw caution to the wind,” said the inspector-in-charge of Kaliachak police station.