Beauty pageant winner Harsha Sunny arrested for allegedly smuggling hydroponic grass worth ₹ 11.8 cr: Details | Today’s news
A 29-year-old woman, an employee of a private bank and runner-up in a beauty pageant, was arrested at the Mumbai airport for allegedly smuggling drugs into India from Bangkok.
The woman, who has been identified as Harsha Sunny, was allegedly carrying 11.8 kg of hydroponic weed worth ₹11.8 million. It landed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) in the early hours of Thursday, an official said.
The accused works as a relationship manager with a private bank and was a participant in a beauty pageant held in Kerala in 2025, the official added.
Customs officers reportedly found 12 packets of hydroponic weed hidden in her bag on the trolley. Sunny said that during her trip to Bangkok, a person befriended her and asked her to take the bag to India.
Read also | DRI seizes cocaine worth ₹11.25 crore at Mumbai airport, four arrested
She was arrested under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and produced before a court which remanded her to judicial custody, the official said, adding that investigations are currently underway to identify other people associated with the drug network.
Smuggling cases on the rise?
Sunny’s arrest is part of a wider trend of India’s airports becoming key staging points for international drug smuggling networks.
On Thursday, news agency PTI reported that DRI officials seized five kg of crystal methamphetamine, worth around ₹5 crore in the international market, from a passenger bound for Malaysia at the Chennai International Airport. The passenger, identified as Sivayogeswaran Rajkumar, a resident of Batlagund in Dindigul district, was detained at the airport’s Terminal 2 on Wednesday evening just before boarding a Kuala Lumpur-bound IndiGo flight (6E 1031), officials said on Thursday.
Read also | Large consignment of hydroponic weed worth ₹33 crore collected by customs at Mumbai airport
Ranya Rao gold smuggling case
In 2025, Kannada actress Ranya Rao was arrested in a gold smuggling case. Director of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials detained Harshavardhini Ranya alias Ranya Rao, stepdaughter of (suspended) police officer Ramachandra Rao at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru on March 2, 2025 after she allegedly made 27 trips to Dubai since January.
Customs officials seized 14,213 kg of smuggled gold bars directly from her and later found cash and jewelery worth over ₹2 million at her residence. She was accused of smuggling gold ₹102 million.
Her associate Tarun Konduru Raju alias Virat Konduru, a 36-year-old US citizen, was arrested six days later for allegedly assisting in the smuggling operation. The third accused, Sahil Sakariya Jain (27), a jeweler from Ballari, was arrested on March 26 for allegedly helping in liquidation of smuggled gold and facilitating hawala transactions.
According to The Hindu, investigations later revealed that the trio were part of a larger syndicate that smuggled over 100 kg of gold into the country between 2024 and 2025. Officials alleged that Konduru facilitated the international movement of gold through Dubai while Jain handled its disposal in India.
Although she had earlier secured bail at the Special Economic Offenses Court, her release was blocked by detention under the Foreign Exchange Protection and Prevention of Smuggling Act (COFEPOSA). Citing a DRI source, PTI reported in April that the one-year remand had expired on April 22, allowing her release.
Read also | ED has attached ₹34 crore of Ranya Rao’s assets in the gold smuggling case
According to figures tabled in Parliament, between April and October 2025 alone, Customs and DRI saw 549 narcotics seizures at airports, seizing drugs worth more than ₹3,300 million crowns. Several major busts involving hydroponic cannabis smuggled from destinations such as Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia were reported at Mumbai, Chennai and Amritsar airports during the year.
