What looked like ordinary passenger luggage at Bhubaneswar railway station turned into one of the city’s sharper inter-state drug busts of the week.
On the night of August 27, Railway Protection Force staff stopped two men moving four trolley bags through the station premises. A search followed. Inside the bags was 55.56 kilograms of ganja, packed for a journey to Mumbai.
The arrested men have been identified as Subodh, from Bihar, and Rahul Bhuiyan, from Ganjam. Preliminary inquiry indicates the consignment originated in the Khalikote area of Ganjam district and was being moved by rail toward Maharashtra — a route railway police say is used with uncomfortable regularity. The pair were produced in court after arrest. A case has been registered at Bhubaneswar GRPS as Case No. 177 under Section 20(b)(ii)(C) of the NDPS Act, Cuttack Division Railway Police Superintendent Bhabani Shankar Udgata said in an official statement.
Investigators suspect a wider inter-state network and say they are tracing further links. Officers described the method as deliberately ordinary: trolley bags that blend with regular travellers. GRP and RPF teams say routine checks and sniffer dogs remain the first line against such consignments.
The same station tightened another layer of screening on August 28. East Coast Railway inaugurated a high-tech parcel scanner at the Bhubaneswar parcel office, with Principal Chief Commercial Manager Rita Raj present. Parcels pass on a conveyor belt while a monitor shows a 3D image of the contents, intended to flag contraband, prohibited goods and dangerous material that have previously moved through the parcel stream. Railway officials called it a step to make both passenger and freight movement safer.
Together, the night seizure and the scanner launch underline the same point: Bhubaneswar station is being treated as a pressure point on the Ganjam-to-Mumbai rail corridor, not just a transit halt.
