Police in early October discovered a tunnel leading to a cannabis farm just below an old theater in southeast London.

A businessman living in Deptford Street, London, England, on October 1 called the police after repeatedly detecting a group of suspicious people breaking into the house next to his home.

When inspecting the house, police discovered a secret tunnel dug in the toilet. From the vault disguised with this hatch, a 21-meter-long tunnel was dug through a private parking space behind the house, leading to the abandoned basement of the old theater built under Queen Victoria. .

In the basement, police found a cannabis farm worth up to £ 40 million (nearly $ 52 million). A second vertical catheter is built on the parking lot to ventilate and act as an exit in case of an accident.

The vast basement below the 750-seat Broadway theater was built in 1897. The theater was demolished in 1963, but the deep foundation was left behind and later used by the gang to grow marijuana.

The house is worth £ 430,000 ($ 556,000), where the tunnel started, currently sealed. Police believe that at least one gang member is a construction worker because the tunnel is professionally designed. They also steal electricity from underground cables to light a cannabis lamp.

Investigators said the illegal cannabis farm could have been in operation for a decade, generating more than £ 4 million (nearly $ 5.2 million) a year. They also think that it is unusual for such a large-scale cannabis farm to operate secretly in this busy street.

London police arrested three 28-47-year-old men and a 36-year-old woman on suspicion of growing marijuana, but all were released during the investigation.

Entrepreneurs living next to the house said the people in the neighborhood were surprised to know that the marijuana farm had been operating directly beneath their ground for the past 10 years. "I was shocked. Sometimes my husband and I heard something like a drill. It never lasted so long but shook the walls on the floor. We didn't know what it was, we just thought it was work." building nearby. It's always a noisy street, "said the businessman.

Earlier this year, police discovered hundreds of marijuana plants in an underground tunnel beneath a garden behind a home in the city of Wolverhampton, central England.

In 2017, three men were jailed for running a cannabis farm in an old nuclear tunnel in Wiltshire county, southwestern England. Labor on this farm is the young Vietnamese. They have to work in slave-like conditions and produce marijuana worth £ 2 million (nearly $ 2.6 million) per year.