After six days of fruitless interrogation, Reza Borhani, the Australian national held for drug trafficking, was remanded in judicial custody, leaving the police with just a sketch of a suspect who looks like Jesus Christ.
Mr. Borhani, who is married to an Indian model and actor, was arrested by the Azad Maidan unit of the Anti Narcotics Cell (ANC) on November 22. He was intercepted by an ANC team in Bandra and was found to be in possession of 1,551 strips of LSD worth ₹1.08 crore. Mr. Borhani was charged under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and remanded in police custody till November 29.
ANC officials who interrogated Mr. Borhani said the first two-three days were spent extracting information about the source of the drugs. They were able to establish that the LSD had come from Germany and was handed over to Mr. Borhani in Assam, from where he brought it to Mumbai.
“We then started quizzing him about the identity of the person who gave him the drugs. He kept saying he only knew the man as Jason, and with little to go on, we tried to get a description of the suspect to make a sketch,” an officer said.
After hours of ‘description’, the ANC’s sketch artist ended up preparing a sketch of a man with long hair and a dense beard, suspiciously similar to Jesus Christ. Even before the ANC could further interrogate Mr. Borhani about the sketch, officials from the Australian High Commission in Mumbai reached the ANC office.
“As Mr. Borhani is a foreign national, there are certain rules to be followed regarding his rights even though he is a prisoner. The rest of his custody period was spent filling out lengthy forms and providing reports to the Australian High Commission, assuring them that his rights were being protected,” the officer said.
Mr. Borhani was produced in court on November 29 and remanded in judicial custody, with the ANC no wiser about the identity of Jason. The ANC is still awaiting responses from drug enforcement agencies from other States and the Narcotics Control Bureau about any information available about him.
“Two other seizures of LSD in the past had possible connections to European nations, and a breakthrough regarding the supplier’s identity could have helped a lot,” the officer said.
