Hyderabad youth caught selling hash oil-laced chocolates online

Hyderabad: A 22-year-old youth from Hyderabad has been arrested by the Hyderabad Narcotic Enforcement Wing (H-NEW), with the help of the Musheerabad police, for selling chocolate bars laced with narcotics.

Rishi Sanjay Mehta was buying chocolates, melting them at home, and mixing them with hash oil. "For every 4 kg chocolate, he added a certain amount of hash oil. Each bar had around 16 blocks of chocolate," Hyderabad police commissioner C.V Anand said.

The police seized 48 bars of drug-laced chocolates, 40 grams of hash oil, and a cell phone—all worth Rs. 5 lakhs.

Rishi is doing an online business management course at the University of Phoenix. During his college days, he became addicted to ganja and hash oil.

"The price of each bar of chocolate varied between Rs. 5,000 and 10,000. Rishi used social media to sell the 'edible chocolates'," said Mr. Anand.

He further said that the content of hash oil was so high in the chocolates that if anyone ate just one block, they would be high for at least 6-7 hours.

"This isn't his first business idea. Earlier, he tried to sell drug-laced e-cigarettes and brownies. They didn't do so well," Mr. Anand said and added that all of Rishi's customers were aged between 18 and 24. "Some of them were students as well," he said.

"On behalf of the Hyderabad city police, I appeal to the parents to pay heed to what kind of activities their children are involved in. When we reached out to the parents of Rishi's customers, they were shocked to find that their children were consuming drugs," he further stated.

The police commissioner appealed to the parents to counsel their children whenever required as many students are consuming drugs due to peer pressure.

"It is our ardent request to the youth/students not to fall prey to drugs, and we request the parents to keep a watch on the activities of their children and feel free to approach the police or pass information to the police by calling 8712661601 to curtail such anti-social activities and strive for a drug-free city," the Hyderabad police commissioner further stated.