A 49 year old mother of two was this morning sentenced to nine months imprisonment by High Court Judge Justice Daniel Gounder this morning after she pleaded guilty to being in possession of marijuana.

Daya Wati was found with 30.5 grams of marijuana when police went to raid her house in Makoi on April 23rd, this year and she voluntarily handed over the drugs when she saw the officers.

In mitigation she told the court that she was selling drugs to educate her two children.

However Judge Gounder states that this is an unfortunate excuse as there are so many people who are poor and cannot afford to send their children to school. He said if every poor person started thinking like her, they would all be criminals.

Meanwhile, 38 year old Eloni Goneyali who was found in possession of 0.3 grams of marijuana at the SCC car park in Suva in May this year was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment by Judge Gounder today.

Judge Gounder states in his ruling that Goneyali has 4 previous convictions of drug cases and despite being given the opportunity to reform himself when he was handed suspended sentences, he completely ignored this.