Bhubaneswar, Nov. 9: Excise officials today arrested a resident of Haladi Padia slum in Lakshmisagar for peddling drugs and seized 73 grams of brown sugar from him.

Excise officials said the arrested peddler, Mustaq Ahmed, 50, who hails from Midnapore in Bengal, had been selling brown sugar for a few years.

Inspector of excise intelligence and enforcement bureau (Cuttack) Amarendra Kumar Jena said the market value of the seized item was around Rs 8 lakh.

"We had been keeping a watch on Ahmed for the past 10 days. He used to sell small sachets containing a few milligrams of brown sugar for Rs 220. He has been running the business for six months," said Jena.

Sources said most of the peddlers dealing in cannabis and other banned intoxicants were switching over to the sale of brown sugar as it fetched them handsome profits.

In another incident, Khandagiri police today arrested a man and a woman at Barmunda bus terminal and seized cannabis weighing around 30 kilograms from them. The duo were planning to smuggle it out of Bhubaneswar by train.