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At least three suspects have been arrested and 25 sacks of bhang seized in a police operation in the Ngara area, Nairobi on Tuesday.
The bhang weighed 466 kilograms and the police also recovered Sh13 million in cash from the house, DCI boss Mohamed Amin said.
Amin said they will treat the money as proceeds of the crime.
“The money was hidden under the mattress in one of the rooms there. The suspects will be in court Wednesday,” he said.
The raid was staged by a team of officers from a transnational organised crime unit who raided a store in the Kariowa slums Ngara area owned by a known drug trafficker.
Police said they had information the suspects were repackaging the narcotics for distribution in the city.
The sacks had arrived in the city from the western part of the country when police staged the raid.
Detectives from the Anti Narcotics Unit joined the probe and took the three suspects into custody for processing.
There have been complaints that the area is one of the key distribution centres in the city.
Most of the bhang that originates in western Kenya and Ethiopia usually ends up in Ngara and Mathare slums for further distribution to other markets.
Police said there has been an increase in incidents of seizure of narcotics in the recent past.
On August 4, police in Moyale seized 500 kilograms of bhang and arrested one suspect in a stealth operation to curtail the trafficking of narcotics in the region.
The operation was launched after police received intelligence information that a lorry had been spotted at a thicket at Kate in Moyale loaded with a suspicious consignment.
The area is popular with such narcotics originating neighbouring Ethiopia.
Swinging into action, the law enforcers rushed to the location where a trailer loaded with 99 bales of the illicit drug estimated at a street value of Sh10 million was intercepted and the cargo seized, police said.
The operation also saw the trailer driver arrested, but not without a confrontation as two suspected accomplices emerged riding on a motorcycle while firing at the officers.
In self-defence, the officers retaliated forcing the assailants to flee.
In the melee, the suspect sustained a gunshot wound in his abdomen and was rushed to Moyale Hospital for treatment.
Some of the bhang consumed in most parts of the country originates in Ethiopia where they are packaged for the market in Nairobi and other major towns, police investigations show.
Several arrests and seizures were made in 2021 in a trend that has worried officials.
Officials say the traffickers use oil tankers to haul their consignments into the country.
Police said the traffickers use the porous Kenya-Ethiopia border to get their illegal consignment into the country.
The border town of Moyale in northern Kenya is an entry point for large hauls of bhang widely grown in Southern Ethiopia.
Once the bhang leaves Shashamane, it heads down south to the border points of Moyale, Sololo, Corolla, Uran and Dukana.
Others use Mandera, Wajir, Garissa route. The other route runs from Funannyata in Sololo, Marsabit county, to the Yamicha plains of Merti subcounty in Isiolo.
They take the consignments to Eastleigh, Majengo and Mlango Kubwa for repackaging and distribution.
In March 2020, detectives arrested a man with 56 bales of bhang, packaged like second-hand clothes. BY MPASHO NEWS