Mumbai psychologist held for selling brownies laced with hashish, opium denied bail

A special Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) court has rejected the bail plea of a 24-year-old psychologist, practising in a renowned south Mumbai hospital, arrested for allegedly selling hashish-laden “hash” brownies. NCB claimed that the accused baked brownie cakes with a mixture of hashish and opium and supplied them to several clients in Mumbai’s party circuit. For the unversed, The Mumbai unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had detained  Rahmeen Charaniya, and allegedly seized 10 kgs of brownie cake containing hashish, sold under name of “hash brownie”. The anti-drug agency claimed 320 grams of opium along with Rs 1,72,000 cash was also recovered during a search of his Mazgaon house.

Charaniya allegedly got habituated to hashish and started baking “hash brownies” after he was inspired by a popular show on narcotics on an OTT platform. Charania had applied for bail through advocate Taraq Sayed, who argued that he was falsely implicated in the case and had been arrested merely on suspicion. “He is pursuing Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology from Singhania University,” the lawyer had said, adding that, “He is good at studies and appearing for his PhD. ”Therefore, he said, the rigours of section 37 of the NDPS Act, 1985 did not apply to the case and there was no impediment in releasing the 24-year-old on bail, as the investigation was complete and chargesheet was already filed.Special public prosecutor Advait Sethna opposed the plea by pointing out that the commercial quantity of drugs was recovered from the applicant and therefore rigours of section 37 were applicable. He pointed out that in case of seizure of mixture of narcotics drugs with one or more neutral substances, the quantity of the neutral substance is not to be excluded while computing the quantity of the seized contraband. Special NDPS judge Rahul Rokade accepted Sethna’s arguments and rejected the bail plea of the 24-year-old psychologist.