According to BNT, the harvest of cannabis usually ends in early August and there was a real chance that  the Koubratovo filed would remain unharvested. It is metres away from the nearby river and the passing railway line and there were visible man-made tracks such as a path leading to the field. This, according to police officers, indicated that the field was cultivated.

The path could not have been been made by fishermen because that section of the river was unsuitable for fishing.

“If the cannabis had grown by chance than it should have spread on both sides of the river, but it hasn't," Valentin Kostov, mayor of Novi Iskar regional municipality told BNT. He maintained that this was the first case of planted cannabis in Novi Iskar municipality.

The cannabis will now be harvested and burned by police in accordance with regulations.

It might be the first case in Novi Iskar but fields of cannabis are by no means unprecedented in Bulgaria.

Every couple of months the media reports about cannabis fields being found in villages all over the country, mainly in the mountains where police presence is thin on the ground. A story that broke few years ago said that elderly people in the mountains were offered money to grow cannabis in their gardens.

TV reports showed some elderly people talking openly about it, referring to it as just another way to support their household budgets. So far no one has been arrested for planting cannabis in Bulgaria.

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