DUBAI: A cook has been accused of possessing 469gm of marijuana and hiding it inside dried fish that he brought with him when he flew into Dubai in May.
A customs inspector was said to have suspected the hand luggage that the 25-year-old Bangladeshi cook, M.F., brought with him shortly after his plane landed at Dubai International Airport.
During a search, a dried grassy substance [marijuana] was found wrapped inside the dried fish.
Drugs prosecutors accused M.F. of smuggling and possessing marijuana and asked for the implementation of the toughest punishment [15 years in jail and a Dh200,000 fine] against him.
The defendant entered a guilty plea when he appeared in the Dubai Court of First Instance.
The customs inspector claimed to prosecutors that the incident happened when the suspect reached the arrivals terminal at the Dubai Airport.
“It was the night shift 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 took the man aside, opened the bag and had it searched.
There were clothes inside but there was also a plastic bag that was wrapped with tape … upon opening the plastic bag, there was dried fish inside. The dried fish contained a white plastic sack. We opened the sack 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 seized substance’s nature, he claimed that it is called ganja back home … which is the same as marijuana. He alleged that he was supposed to hand it over to someone else,” the inspector testified.
Prosecution records cited the cook as admitting that he mixed up the marijuana with the dried fish and smuggled it to consume it in Dubai.
He was also quoted as saying that he mixed it with the dried fish to make it easier for him to smuggle it into the UAE.
