Tea is the second most popular and safe traditional beverage in the world, behind water. There is no need to be concerned about drinking tea or transporting it while travelling. Unfortunately, this was not the case with Vun Pui ‘Connie’ Chong and her daughter San Yan Melanie. While the mother-daughter duo was carrying tea, the police officers misunderstood it as drugs. They decided to put them behind the bars.
However, according to Vice, the mother and daughter had bought 25 kg of brown ginger tea. They planned to sell for a profit of roughly AU$90. Their business idea, however, came to an abrupt halt. After their tea packets were seized at an airport by Australian Border Force (ABF) personnel. They mistook the beverage for the amphetamine stimulant Phenmetrazine.
Not only that, but in January, heavily armed police officers invaded Chong and Lim’s residence in southwest Sydney to arrest them. This occurred despite the fact that authorities were made aware of issues with the tests used to detect the drugs in the months that followed. As a result, the mother-daughter duo was behind the bars for nearly 4 months. Only when New South Wales Police was done with its own forensic study, the accusations against them were withdrawn.
Reports by Sunday Morning Herald state, the ABF test only detects a spectrum of chemicals that were comparable to Phenmetrazine. A forensic operator of the Australian Federal Police wrote a letter. The letter mentions, “Mate in a nutshell we cannot take from this ABF result. The sample contains or does not contain Phenmetrazine.” The court eventually recognised the blunder. It states the mother and daughter would not have been behind bars if Conaghan had communicated the information about the faulty testing to their defence team.