As police crack down on ganja menace in Hyderabad, some addicts prefer GIY (Grow It Yourself)

Some addicts in Hyderabad are resorting to home cultivation of cannabis after the Telangana police's crackdown on the ganja menace limited weed availability, thereby pushing prices up.

A pizza centre operator was arrested in the city on Sunday for growing cannabis plants in flower pots in his rented house's terrace.

“The accused PVN Sastry (53) was addicted to ganja (weed) and started growing the plants for his own consumption and with a plan to sell to others too, if the harvest was good,” Jawahar Nagar police station inspector Bikshapathi Rao told DH.

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Sastry was booked under various sections of the Narcotic and Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and sent to remand. The maximum punishment under the Act is 10 years imprisonment, Rao said.

Officials suspect that more such people could be involved in micro-scale cultivation of ganja within their premises for personal use or use within close circles.

“This kind of activity is hard to detect, unless reported by someone like a neighbour,” officials said.

This type of in-house ganja cultivation, using online videos etc., has been reported in the city earlier too.

Also Read | Drug possession: What the NDPS Act says

In January 2017, a bank employee turned peddler – Syed Shahid Hussain (33) – was arrested for selling weed. Police found that Hussain had “a cannabis garden” in his two-bedroom flat in Manikonda in the IT hub of the city. Cops were amazed at Hussain's use of LED lights, fans, humidifiers, essential to create the right environment for a good crop.

While Sastry was living with his wife in the house, Hussain's family was reportedly staying along with him in the flat, making the activity less suspicious.

According to officials, Dhoolpet, Mangalhat are among areas in the old city that are the hubs of drug use and sale. While there have been reports of the forbidden plant grown clandestinely amidst other crops in areas, such as Vikarabad near Hyderabad, most of the ganja supply to the city now, Telangana police officials say, is from the Andhra-Odisha border region of Visakhapatnam in the neighboring state.

Expressing concern over the ganja menace in the state, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had, last month, convened a high-level meeting and declared a war on drugs trade and substance abuse.

Special NDPS enforcement cells were also formed after CM Rao called for a comprehensive action plan “before the situation goes out of hand.”

Several hundred kilos of cannabis have been seized and dozens of suppliers have been arrested since then under the Cyberabad, Hyderabad and Rachakonda police commissionerates, which cover the Telangana capital city area.

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