Balasore, March 2: Police here seized brown sugar worth over Rs 1 crore from a woman last night. Sanu Biwi, 35, has been arrested and is being interrogated by the police, who are trying to find out details about a possible narcotic gang operating in the district.

A special squad led by superintendent of police Rajesh Kumar raided the house of the suspect at Orod Bazar last night and seized one kilogram and forty gram contraband stuffed in different sizes of packets. The accused was also arrested earlier on the charge of drug trafficking.

The alleged drug peddler will be forwarded to court after interrogations today. She had been charged under Section 21 of the Narcotics, Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, said the superintendent of police.

“We had kept a close eye on her movements. Last night, following a tip off, we raided her house and found the contraband substance. She seems to have a link with the drug mafia based outside the state. She is being interrogated and we hope to track down the source of the contraband and the people behind it,” said Kumar.

“During earlier raids, we had made seizures of small quantities of contraband items. But this time, we could manage to get a big consignment from her,” said Maheswar Sethi, the inspector-in-charge Sahadevkhunta police station.

In late 90s, the town had seen drug transactions and the police had managed to arrest Azad Parvez, the kingpin of a drug racket. He has been in jail since 1998.