Police stopped a 61-year-old man in the settlement of Akkermanovka near Novotroitsk, in Orenburg Oblast, on suspicion of growing drugs, regional interior ministry (UMVD) press officers said.[1] While searching the outbuildings on his property, officers found and seized 64 cannabis plants and the equipment used to grow them, including lamps, fans, watering cans, seeds and fertiliser.[1] They also found and seized 991 grams of marijuana, and an examination confirmed that the seized plant material was a narcotic drug of plant origin.[1]

The man told investigators, according to police, that he grew the cannabis to sell it to people who use drugs and to smoke part of it himself.[2] Investigators opened criminal cases against him for attempted large-scale sale of narcotics and for illegal cultivation of plants containing narcotic substances.[1] Under the sale charge he faces up to 20 years in prison, and the cultivation charge carries up to two years, Kommersant reported.[2]

The arrest was made during “Kanal – Kaspiysky Mayak”, a preventive anti-drug operation, in a search involving officers of the Orenburg Oblast drug-control directorate and police station No 3 of the Orsk interior ministry directorate.[3] The local news outlet 1743.ru reported on the case under the headline that the man could face 15 years.[3] Ak Kermanovka lies just outside Novotroitsk, a city in Orenburg Oblast in Russia’s southern Urals.[4]