Kerala youth held with 5 crore worth hydroponic weed at Coimbatore airport

Coimbatore: Air intelligence unit (AIU) officers with the customs department on Wednesday night seized 5.25kg of hydroponic weed (ganja) worth Rs5 crore from a passenger at the city airport and arrested a 24-year-old native of Kerala on Thursday for smuggling the same into the country from Bangkok in Thailand.

Trichy Customs (Preventive) Commissionerate on Thursday posted a message on its X handle, stating the AIU officers, in coordination with the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, nabbed Muhammad Fazil, 24, of Villiappally in Kozhikode district in Kerala, at the Coimbatore airport around 11.30pm on Wednesday with more than 5kg hydroponic ganja based on intelligence inputs from the Directorate General of Analytics and Risk Management in Delhi. He arrived at the airport from Bangkok via Singapore by Scoot Airlines.

Officials subsequently seized the contraband and arrested Muhammad Fazil under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and the customs act. He was produced before the chief judicial magistrate court on Thursday afternoon and remanded in judicial custody.

According to police officers, hydroponics is a cultivation method that commonly uses water with added nutrients, rather than soil. Hydroponics weed is grown indoors in a fully controlled environment. "Mostly, this drug is smuggled from Bangkok in Thailand. Two days ago, the AIU team had arrested a passenger who arrived from Bangkok via Singapore by Scoot Airlines at the Trichy airport with three kilograms of hydroponic weed. On April 23, the AIU arrested another passenger, who travelled from Bangkok via Colombo, at Trichy airport with 9.9kg of hydroponic weed worth almost Rs10 crore. Similar hydroponic weed smuggling cases have been reported from airports located in Kerala and other states in the country," said a senior police officer.