67 pilgrims held for cannabis at Pashupatinath Shivaratri
Nepalese police arrested 67 pilgrims at the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu on 10 March 2013 for smoking cannabis and disturbing the peace during the Shivaratri festival, the biggest such roundup of pilgrims to date.
Nepalese police arrested 67 people at the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu on Sunday 10 March 2013 for smoking cannabis and disturbing the peace during the Shivaratri festival.[1]Most of those held were found intoxicated with cannabis, and those arrested were pilgrims, Kathmandu police spokesman Uttam Subedi told Agence France-Presse.[1]
Cannabis is illegal in Nepal, but holy men known as sadhus are allowed to smoke it during the annual celebration honouring the Hindu god Shiva.[1]Thousands of pilgrims travel to the temple complex from Nepal and India for Shivaratri, and police deployed thousands of officers as more than 150,000 pilgrims were expected.[1]The roundup was the biggest arrest of pilgrims for drug use at the festival to date.[1][2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Police arrested nine people for possessing illegal drugs in separate operations across seven districts of Nepal, the Central Police News Room said. Only one case involved cannabis: about 80 kg of ganja found with a 55-year-old man at Balan Khola in Siraha, while the rest turned up brown heroin, brown sugar or prescription medicines.
The Kathmandu Valley Police Office in Ranipokhari reported 444 drug-related cases and 378 arrests in the first three months of the fiscal year, mid-July to mid-October, part of a wider law-and-order campaign in the Valley. Its account named cannabis among the drugs seized but gave no weight for it, grouping it with heroin, pollen and nearly 296,000 ampoules and tablets.
Nepal's Narcotics Control Bureau arrested two Indian nationals at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport with six kilograms of ganja flown in from Thailand. The pair, a woman from Ghaziabad and a youth from Madhubani, were caught during airport screening with two passports and four phones seized; questioning and investigation continue.
Police arrested five people while about 210 kg of marijuana in eight sacks was being loaded into two Scorpio vehicles in Chyandanda, Dharan. Officers fired two rounds in the air as the group tried to flee before taking them into custody.
