The East Java police narcotics directorate arrested a Malang man for planting cannabis in the yard of his house.[1] The man, identified only as RI, 33, of Sidorenggo village in Ampel Gading district, was arrested at his home with a field-like greenhouse planted with cannabis behind the house.[1]
Police seized about 148 cannabis plants from the yard.[1] RI told police he had been growing them for about three months from seedlings given free by a friend, SL, for whom police issued a wanted notice.[1] The provincial narcotics director, Senior Commissioner Muhammad Kurniawan, said RI was a narcotics recidivist jailed for 8.5 years in a 2017 methamphetamine case in Malang and freed from Lowokwaru prison in 2022.[1]
Kurniawan said RI was also suspected of involvement in a Malang narcotics network, though the working conclusion was still that the growing was local to Malang.[1] RI was charged under Article 111(2) of the 2009 Narcotics Law and related criminal-code provisions.[1] The same briefing placed the plants within the province’s July-to-September enforcement totals, which also listed non-cannabis drugs that are not recorded here.[1]
