NALGONDA: Nalgonda police on Tuesday busted an inter-state racket selling spurious cotton seeds. Police have arrested 23 persons in connection with the selling of spurious cotton seeds and also seized 15 quintals of cotton seeds worth Rs 30 lakhs, machinery, which is used for packing and cell phones from their possession.

Initially, the matter came to the attention of the police as four packets of cotton seeds were found without proper packaging and labelling at Kammagudem in Chandur Mandal of Nalgonda district. After knowing this, police swung into the action and formed a special team under ASP Sathish and started an investigation. The investigation revealed that the persons involved in the selling of spurious cotton had links from Andhra Pradesh.

The police had taken the persons one after the other, who had linkage with selling of spurious cotton seeds into custody and started an investigation.

The arrested included Madhusudhan Reddy, Hussein Pera, and Sai alias Hussein Sab. The others arrested in this connection were: Chinna Reddy, Jaipal Reddy, Mahipal Reddy, Sandeep Reddy and Peddi Reddy from Nagar Kurnool district, Balaswamy and Ramesh from Khammam district, Narsimhulu Goud from Jogulamba Gadwal district, Parvathalu, M Lingaiah, Yadagiri, Gajji Shanker, Bhagavanth, S Ramesh, Nagaraju and Shoban in Nalgonda district and S K Rajasekhat of Mahaboobnagar district. Some of the arrested persons were running seeds shops at their places and were cheating farmers.

While presenting the arrested persons at a press conference, Nalgonda SP AV Ranganath said that they had taken two persons into custody at Chandur, and based on the information given the two persons, we arrested others involved in it. He also stated that the arrested included the persons involved in preparing and marketing of spurious seeds. Police have identified that they had marketed the seeds in the brand names of Akshara and Indigo. The SP said that they have valid pieces of evidence to invoke Preventive Detention (PD) act against them. He further stated that they are collecting the details of the farmers who had purchased spurious cotton seeds from the persons.