The smuggling of PDS rice in the city outskirts has reached to newer heights as the illegal rice hoarders are now using school dropouts of slum areas to collect rice and transport them to their shades. For this, they are even providing old and worn-out vehicles without number plates to smuggle the grain, a simple way to escape the law.
On December 9, the Rajendranagar police caught an under aged boy driving a worn out activa vehicle carrying a rice bag – purportedly PDS rice at Pillar No.258, Shivrampally. The bewildered boy soon started making calls to his boss to avert arrest while the police, though reluctant initially, took him into custody along with the PDS rice and drove him to Rajendranagar Police Station a few miles away from the spot.
However, the person apprehended by the police along with the PDS Rice appeared a minor not more than an age of 15 years. As the pandemic stricken lockdown robbed the poor people with their routine wages and increased school dropout to many folds in recent days especially in slum areas like Hassan Nagar, Suleman Nagar and surrounding areas, the anxious parents are now left their children to the tender mercies of adversities and counts on whatever and however they manage to earn for the survival of whole family.
Generally the illegal PDS rice hoarders use under aged children to collect the rice from local people of slum areas like Hassan Nagar, Indra Nagar and Suleman Nagar etc thereby to shift the grain to their sheds largely located in Tata Nagar area known as bastion of illegal PDS rice hoarders.
This situation largely plays in favour of the illegal PDS rice hoarders who are now using under aged children to collect rice from poor people of the slum areas who tend to sell out extra rice being supplied to them through fair price shops.
