DUBAI: A cook has been jailed for 10 years after being convicted on charges of smuggling 469g of marijuana that he tried to sneak into the UAE in a packet of dried fish. The cook was caught with the narcotics at Dubai International Airport in May.
A customs inspector became suspicious about the 25-year-old Bangladeshi cook, M.F., as he screened his hand baggage shortly after the latter had disembarked from a flight at the Dubai International Airport.
Upon taking the cook and his luggage to a private search room, a dried grassy substance (the marijuana) was found wrapped inside the dried fish.
The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted M.F. of smuggling and possessing marijuana.
According to the primary verdict, the accused was also fined Dh50,000.
He will be deported following the completion of his punishment.
The customs inspector testified about the incident at the arrivals terminal at Dubai airport.
“It was the nightshift when one of my colleagues suspected that M.F. was carrying a banned substance. The special scanner detected a strange object inside the bag. My colleague searched the defendant’s luggage. There were clothes inside but there was also a plastic bag that was wrapped with a tape; upon opening the plastic bag, there was dried fish inside. Inside the dried fish, there was a white plastic pouch. We opened the pouch and found inside it a substance that looked like marijuana. Upon confronting the defendant, he denied possessing any illegal substance and claimed that he had nothing to do with that substance. When we questioned him about the nature of the seized substance, he claimed that it is called ganja [in Bangladeshi language] which is the same as marijuana. He alleged that he brought it with him from a friend in Bangladesh and was supposed to hand it over to someone else,” said the inspector.
Prosecution records cited the cook as confessing that he mixed up the marijuana with the dried fish and attempted to smuggle it with him to Dubai for personal consumption. He was also quoted as saying that he mixed the narcotic with the dried fish to make it unrecognisable and to make it easier for him to smuggle it to the UAE.
