Mental pill to profitable biz: How an Iranian MBA graduate turned Bidadi villa into ganja nursery

An Iranian MBA graduate allegedly teamed with others to turn a Bidadi villa into a ganja garden, where the Central Crime Branch (CCB) seized Rs 1 crore worth of narcotics.

The CCB busted the drug racket and arrested four people, including two Iranian nationals. The drugs seized include 130 hydro ganja plants, 12.8 kg of dry hydro ganja and LSD strips.

Police inspector Deepak R said he received information that a gang was selling drugs in Kaverinagar, RT Nagar, on Sunday. He joined with another inspector B S Ashok and other officers.

The team rushed to the spot and nabbed the foursome when as they waited for the customer in their car with the drugs.

Read | CCB sleuths nab four drug peddlers including two Irani nationals in Bengaluru

Two of the arrested, Javad Rostampour Ghotb Aldin, 34, and Mohammadi Barogh, 35, are from Tehran.

Javad resided in Eagleton Golf Village in Bidadi and Mohammadi resided in Kaverinagar.

Their partners were Mohammed Mohsin Uz Zaman alias Mohsin, 31, from Hegdenagar, and Mohsin Khan, 30, from Saunders Road in Fraser Town.

Police learnt that Javad had grown hydro ganja in his villa. The police raided his villa around 3 pm and seized the hydro ganja plants, a weighing machine and dry hydro ganja stored in container jars.

UV lights, LED lamps, vacuum packing containers, a car and mobile phones belonging to the accused persons were also seized. Two others involved in the racket, Prateek Jain and Jitendra Jain, are at large.

Javad came to Bengaluru in 2010 and studied MBA at a Banaswadi college. He stayed at a rented house in Kammanahalli.

Javad had mental illness and researched for a cure. He learnt that cannabidiol or CBD, a component in ganja, helps fight his illness and relaxes the brain. As narcotic cases carried death penalty, he stayed back.

He bought hydro ganja on the dark web from Europe and grew it as an experiment in a fish tank in his Kammanahalli house.

Hydro ganja will not grow in sunlight and needs cold and controlled environment. It also grows in Cocopeat-filled pots with specific chemicals with appropriate lighting, AC and fan. Hydro ganja is grown in cold countries.

Javad bought the book ‘Marijuana Bible’ online and also studied growing ganja in detail from a website. He continued to grow ganja in the fish tank, imported chemical powders to protect the plants from pest or insect attack, besides setting up climate control machines.

Rented villa for Rs 36,000 a month

As the entire police machinery was cracking down on drug peddlers following the sandalwood drugs case, Javad rented the villa for 36,000 a month and set up a ganja nursery. He dried hydro ganja and sold them to students, IT professionals, party-goers and businessmen among others. He had earlier been arrested by the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) and Yeshwanthpur police. Mohammadi sourced LSD strips through the dark web and sold them to customers in the city with the help of the other suspects.