Post-GST, smuggled cigarettes thrive in city

Cigarettes smuggled from Bangladesh through the railways are now available in city paan shops. The packets without any pictorial description of lung cancer are a cause of concern to public health authorities and cause revenue loss to the government, the police said.

City paan shops are illegally selling two brands of cigarettes ‘Win’ priced at `50 a packet containing 20 cigarettes and ‘Paris’, `60 a packet containing 20 cigarettes. Apart from this there are two sub brands of Paris priced in the wholesale market at `20 and `40 a packet respectively. Paan shop owners who sell the cigarettes said there was a rise in the sales of smuggled cigarettes after the government imposed Goods and Service Tax on branded ones. Some traders from Begum Bazaar, Osmangunj and the commercial hubs of Secunderabad are supplying the smuggled cigarettes to paan shops and other outlets.

The cigarette packets do not have MRP, manufacturer’s name or batch number. “It all depends on the customer. Regular customers can get it for `45 while new ones have to pay `55,” disclosed Fareed, a paan shop owner at Chandrayangutta.

The cigarettes, according to the police, are being smuggled in trains from Bangladesh. “It is not clear where these cigarettes are being manufactured. But we suspect that they are manufactured in Bangladesh and smuggled into this country,” said Task Force (West) team inspector L. Raja Venkat Reddy.

The Commissioner's Task Force busted a cigarette smuggling racket on Tuesday and caught two persons. The police seized 48,000 packets worth `19 lakh from them. The kingpin of the case is absconding.

“It is a big network and we are working on leads,” the inspector added.